


Dreadnought

by lunaaltare



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Body Horror, Bottom Sam Wilson, Death of Minors, Dehumanization, Eating Disorder, Explicit Sexual Content, Forced Cannibalism, Jealous Bucky Barnes, Jealous Steve Rogers, M/M, Mutation, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-consensual experimentation, PTSD, Polyamory, Possessive Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Bucky Barnes, Recovery, Sam-Centric, Scent Marking, Sexual Harassment, Torture, Winged!Sam Wilson, everyone loves sam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2018-07-21 23:13:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 76,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7408966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunaaltare/pseuds/lunaaltare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s 2015. So when a Nazi organization bags and kidnaps a bisexual black man to be their next asset, he guesses they’re trying their hand at this whole progressive thing, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. monochrome

**Author's Note:**

> sam wilson is my winged bean son, yet i write this. i don't have a beta, so all mistakes are mine. feel free to call me out.  
> -tla

**i**

**монохромный**

[m o n o c h r o m e]

-

 _It’s cold and muggy; which, honestly, is an abominable combination between sticky, stifling and biting._ Discomfort harries him even through the thick haze of oblivion, his nails scratching at the soggy, irritated patches of skin. When that does fuck all, he blearily rolls on his side. He gets jabbed in the rib by a twig. He rolls in the opposite direction, and then his elbow sinks in an exceptionally icy pit of marsh.

He obviously isn’t going to catch any sleep.

From there, he gradually becomes more aware of his surroundings. Like the throaty cawing somewhere deep in the treetops. The dirt clinging to his flesh. The valiant few ants marching their way up his bare legs. If he focuses hard enough, he can faintly hear a gurgling bank swollen with water somewhere in the distance.

He pulls himself upright. The world spins on its axis a couple seconds before it rights itself.

His mouth is dry, he’s thirsty and he has to piss. He’s addled, but at least he can identify some very basic needs and handle them. Well, at least the urinating part.

The small clearing he finds himself in is surrounded by dark, looming trees, densely packed together like wooden gates. The ground is nothing more than hard mud dusted with frost. Above him, the sky distends with heavy, dusky clouds and ill omens. If he doesn’t find cover fast, he’ll be a frozen corpse entombed under layers of ice.

How he ended up in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, Not-America, sprawled unconscious against the forest floor, he doesn’t know. His memory is like wading through a fog, or better yet, kayaking through fucking concrete. Vague bits return to him—a series of dissonant sensations more than anything—but they all compile to be utterly  _useless_. He remembers the acrid stench of exhaust. Blinding white. Gelid, black water swallowing and dragging him down,  _down_ ,  ** _down_** —

And then his brain turns to static, then— _bam!_ —he’s here.

No clue why he’s here. Or where “here” is. Or  _who_ “he” is.

Shit.

He searches himself for a sign; maybe a wallet or a badge or  _something_ , but he comes up fruitless. All he wears are these cropped, white pants and an equally plain t-shirt. No pockets. He wiggles his damp toes. Apparently no shoes, either. He lifts his shirt and eyes the expanse of dark skin littered with scars. Some puckered and new, others old and faded. However, no tattoos he can see.

He checks either arm and then—ah! The numbers  _00804330_ stick out, sloppy and ugly, against his right forearm. He runs his finger along the shape of the  _0_.

He can’t feel it; it was branded.  _He_ was branded.

He swallows the sticky knot in his throat and drops his arm by his side; he can worry about that once he wasn’t in danger of freezing to death.

The forest is conclusively unfamiliar—although  _familiarity_ is a shoddy system to follow, as disoriented as he is—but there’s an almost… _itching_ sense prickling the corners of his brain. Akin to that feeling when you forget a word, but it remains hidden somewhere in the forefront of your mind— _the tip of your tongue!_ —yet painfully out of reach. That’s what these woods are like. And he knows with clarity (the  _only_  thing he knows with clarity, mind you) that he knows where he’s going.

Wherever that is.

[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

There’s a base.

Miles and miles away from where he started, through a labyrinthine taiga and on the smaller end of an isthmus, there’s a base. By the time he reaches it, the sky is black and starless. Snow falls; not in gentle caresses and wet kisses, but as angry, unremitting sleet. The wind blows hard, and how he survives the trek without losing a limb or two is a fucking medical miracle.

On ground level, the base doesn’t look like much. It’s all gray with hard lines, no windows. An obscenely boring and square structure that meshes with the bitter, mountainous environment. The only entrance is a metal door that lacks handles. Instead, there’s a flat pad fixed to off to the side.

After a moment of hesitation, he presses his thumb to the pad. It pricks his finger. Before he has a chance to be surprised his thumb isn’t frozen (or that his blood isn’t slushy), there’s a resonant droning. The ground thrums underneath his feet, like a herd of elephants stamping in tandem, and he takes a startled step back.

The door slides open. Air rushes forward. And— _fuck_ —it’s  _warm_.

He stumbles into the metal box, latching onto this warmth and letting it draw him in. He presses his body against the walls of the confine—an elevator shaft, he thinks—and lets the heated surface bring life to his sense of touch. He runs his fingers along the ridges of the shaft. Traces the seam where two slabs of metal welded together.

“ _Тема 00804330, War Angel, возвращение на базу. Выбор действия._ ” An automated voice whirrs from an unseen speaker, alarming him. He doesn’t understand the language, but he’s heard it before. Russian, definitely, with bits of English thrown in.

00804330 were the numbers branded on his arm. The voice must be talking about him.

“ _Отправить его вниз.”_ It’s a different voice this time. Deep, male and just as robotic—but not automated. His skin puckers with gooseflesh. A chill races up his spine; the warmth means nothing anymore.

“ _Какой уровень я должен послать его, сэр_?”

He peels away from the wall and quickly absorbs his surroundings. The shaft is a lusterless gray and barebones—there’s not even a safety rail. The light above him flickers. The elevator creaks as gears grind somewhere within the machine. The pong of bleach and dirty mops fills his nostrils.

 “ _Первый уровень. Сделайте это быстро._ ” the man says after a moment.

“ _Да, сэр. Ускоренные гидравлика была активирована_.”

And just like that, the elevator  _shoots_ downward at a dizzying speed. He staggers forward, but, with preternatural grace, catches himself before he could split his skull on the floor. Air rushes in from the cracks in the wall. The box shudders and groans. He braces himself in a corner, body pressed as far into the space as it can go.

The elevator stops violently—like it was blindsided by a fucking  _semi-truck_ —and he’s jostled one last time. He falls flat on his jaw. His teeth throbs.

“ _С учетом прибыли на первом уровне, сэр_.” says the bot.

“ _Открой дверь._ ”

“ _Да, сэр._ ”

Once the door reopens, the first thing he notices is the noise, well, the lack thereof. Then his attention shifts to the stupid amount of people crammed into a single room—forty-one he counts, all donned in various protection gear. Scents overwhelm him, but nothing like he’s used to. Not only can he smell perspiration, but the _fear_ and  _agitation_ rolling off the crowd in pungent waves. Like miasma, it wraps around his throat and gags him.

 _Sensory overload_. The word floats from the edge of his consciousness, almost mocking him since he can’t recall what it means or  _why_ he knows it.

A man shoves his way to the front of the group. He has a long, worn face with deep wrinkles and a chin covered in whiskers that couldn’t fully form a beard anymore. He pulls a worn recorder from his coat pocket and brings it to his lips, staring at him—maybe  _through_ him—with lidded, dead eyes.

He scoots back to the corner of the elevator, silently willing the door to slam shut.

“Subject 00804330 returns to base from unknown location without aid or prompting. It identified the fastest route instantly and reported with 11 minutes and 53 seconds left from midnight to spare. Subject has passed the Artificial Memory Navigation assessment.” The edges of his lips kick up in what he supposes is a smile. “It is prepared for stage six.”

He frowns, but immediately the man is back to speaking Russian, shouting commands in that monotone voice with an unsettling lilt. Five people from the crowd—soldiers, if their guns and uniforms mean anything—usher into the elevator with him. He scrambles to his feet, body tense and prepped for combat, but other than cast sidelong glances at him, they do nothing.

The elevator descends deeper into the base. His heart delves deeper into his stomach.

Surprisingly, he’s the tallest one in the elevator. The oldest, too. Underneath their too-big caps and strange, black uniforms are fresh faces. Some haven’t even shaved the baby fat around their cheeks yet. Hell, some don’t look any older than _fifteen_ , yet here they all are, gripping M-16s like they were born for this.

They smell strongly of sweat and gun oil. Underneath that, the stale scents of shaving cream, cheap cologne, and cigarettes saturate the atmosphere. Was his sense of smell always this keen? The ride ends before he has a chance to figure it out. They walk him down a series of halls that look exactly the same. He tries to note the amount of lefts and rights he takes, but after fifteen minutes of trooping through this winding, white-walled hell, he realizes the starkness is deliberate.

They take him to a circular vault door in a dead-end hallway. It’s all chrome and burnished with more dials, bolts, and locks than he can ever hope to count—an absolutely convoluted piece of machinery.

Two soldiers secure the entrance. And at his arrival, both of them work in tandem to unlock the vault. A full minute of mechanical clunking ensues, punctuated by the heavy door popping ajar. It takes three men and a Herculean will to wrench it halfway open.

They clearly don’t want him leaving anytime soon.

A room lies on the opposite side. Well, less of a room and more of a concrete chamber. It’s bare, like the rest of this base, sans a sink, a toilet, and a single dim light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Musty, stale air wafts from the opening. His nose wrinkles.

One guard prods him with the muzzle of his gun—he’s been speaking this entire time, he guesses—and shoves him forward. For the sake of not getting plugged with lead, he goes in without a fight. The only way out seals behind him.

Is  _he_ a bad guy? The question strikes him on his third amble around the small perimeter.

Even in this muddled state, he understands that the world isn’t black or white; rather a multiplex grayscale colored with  _if_ s,  _ands_ , and  _buts_. However, as he stands here—in an inescapable underground cell, surrounded by sentinels and miles of desolate woods—he can’t help but feel criminalized. What could he have possibly done to end up in a place like  _this_?

Smoke. White. Water. Indefinite darkness. Next thing he knows, he springs awake in a clearing; where, apparently, he’s enlisted in some shady ass program that comes in phases, sanctioned branding and allows people to refer to him as ‘it’.

Oh, and administers assault rifles to child soldiers. He almost forgot that part.

He sits cross-legged on the ground and rereads the numbers seared into his skin. He traces the digits with his fingers, eyebrows knitted together in a frown.

  1. _00804330_.  _War Angel_.



Who  _is_  he?

[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

 _A grenade detonates several yards ahead of him, and he barely finds cover fast enough to avoid the shrapnel. Soot and dirt cover his face. He can’t breathe past the dust suffusing the air. A knife wound leaks like a broken pipe from his side, and_ —shit— _it hurts to move._

_The unstable wall of cinderblocks and live cables he ducks behind somehow manages to be the least of his problems. The fleet of adversaries besieging what’s left of the base is definitely high up there. The liters of blood drenching his fatigue is probably higher. But being trapped with a busted communicator and separated from the rest of his teammates?_

_Yeah. That’s number one._

_Another grenade goes off, nearer this time, and he knows he’s being smoked out. The structure quakes. Rubble and plaster fall from the ceiling. There’s scratchy, unintelligible roaring in his earpiece, but its worthless noise in his ear. He yanks it out and flings it in the rubble; he doesn’t need any distractions._

_He has to leave—_ now.  _He searches for a clear take off spot. There is none. Whatever, he can make do; he always_ does _._

_He unfolds the smoking wing-pack and angles his body towards the gape in the ceiling._

[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

He doesn’t realize he nodded off until the clacking vault door frightens him out of sleep. He stirs with a jerk, his leg swiping outward as if to dropkick an enemy. Chest heavy and brain cottony from his impromptu nap, he eyes the entrance.

Instead of opening the dense metal door, a square hole, almost like a doggy door, slides open. A tray is nudged through with a rod, then locked again. He pushes off the wall and stretches, scratching his side.

The food they serve him looks like shit—smells like it, too. It’s all indiscernible beige mush speckled with black and…green? He thinks its mashed potatoes. Pink-gray slices of mystery meat lay flaccidly on the side, looking everything like rubber and nothing like anything edible. He’s seen better meals from public schools in Detroit.

Nonetheless, his stomach growls and he’s in no position to be bougie when he doesn’t know if he’ll be fed again. So he sucks it up, plugs his nose, and shovels it into his mouth.

Sustenance is sustenance, even when it tastes like ass.

[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

The Comprehensive List of Things He Could’ve Done to Get Here:

  1. ~~Pissed off a mafia of Russian scientists.~~
  2. ~~Made an attempt on Vladimir Putin’s life.~~
  3. ???
  4. Told Russia their vodka tastes like hot shit.



(The thought of red hair and a cunning smirk surprises him, but it’s gone before he can dwell on it. His heart aches.)

[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

 

He tracks the progression of time through his meals. Three days have gone by if he’s correct about being fed twice every 12 hours. The little slot would open and the guards shove a tray in. Sometimes the food makes it in just fine. Other times, it manages to spill all over the floor. It all depends on the sentry and his level of dickheadedness at the moment.

By then, he’s counted how many steps it takes to cover the space of the room (2303), how many blotches of mildew dotted the concrete (far too many to pass health codes), how long he could stare at the wall before he got dizzy (around 30 minutes if he hasn’t eaten; an hour and a half if he has) and a multitude of other unusable intel one could conjure up while staring at the same four walls all day.

When he’s not counting, he’s dreaming.

For the most part, his dreams are of the same sequence of events. Smoke, white, water; rinse, wash, repeat and that’s what most of his fitful slumber is comprised of. It’s his subconscious trying, and failing, to fill in the gaps between  _then_  and  _now_. Churning out awful scenarios like his stunted memories are a prompt for a screenplay.

Rarely, he dreams about anything else. When he does, they’re short lived, but he treasures them like they’re made of gold. They vanish when he wakes up— _God_ , that tears him apart, because he’s always so,  _so_ close—but the ache is tangible. He’s left with the odds-and-ends of the reverie afterwards; like flashes of red and gold and a pang of irritation. Or the garbled, yet  _sensual_ , chorus of a song whirling around his head in lazy circles.

Even more seldom, memories come back to him—all completely and utterly fucking _worthless_. Just an hour ago, he was violently thrown out of his nap by a “ _eureka!”_  moment.

About his first ride.

He remembers the 1978 Electra-Glide Harley in technicolor. The way sunlight bounced off the sleek red paint job and shone directly into his eyes. The pride that swelled in his chest when girls and boys alike ogled the bike. The reflective aviators and denim jacket he didn’t feel whole riding without. He recalls everything down to the  _mileage_ , but for the love of fuck, he can’t even think of the first letter of his  _name_.

[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

_“Bull-fucking-shit.”_

_“What?”_

_“You skipped over the entire Star Wars trilogy, but you watched ‘The Notebook’? Seriously?”_

_“It’s cute!”_

_“What’s next, huh? ‘Mr. Wrong’? ‘Good Luck Chuck’? ‘From Justin to Kelly’?”_

_“…”_

_“I don’t know you anymore.”_

[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

He figures he’s one of the good guys.

He spends the entire “afternoon” gauging his alignment, guessing what fucked up stunt he could’ve pulled to wind up in the Russian version of Guantanamo Bay. He draws nothing but blanks, of course. When his memory inevitably fails him, he conducts a moral test to judge his place on the grayscale.

 _Would you kill someone?_ is the first question he asks himself.

 _Yes_. He answers quickly—maybe  _too_  quickly. He pauses and gnaws his bottom lip, mulling over the query.  _Yes, but I don’t want to. I’d do it when it’s necessary…when I’m out of options._ The response settles easily in his gut.

From there, the damn breaks.

_Would you use a gun?_

_Kill an animal?_

_Fight a woman?_

The first two are easily answered with a yes. The third one makes him hesitate, but he knows from experience—experience that he can’t remember, but he digresses—that a woman can pack one helluva punch if she wants.

 _Break the law?_ Of course.  _Challenge your government?_ Definitely. The backbone of his country is a piece of paper written by a bunch of racist dudes in petticoats. The entire damn nation was founded on white supremacy, slave labor, and genocide, and the government sure as shit reflects that centuries later. So  _yes_ , he can proudly say that he’d challenge his government in a heartbeat.

 _Sacrifice others to save yourself?_ No. It’s craven and selfish and…not  _him_ (whoever  _he_ is).

 _Would you kill a child?_ He freezes.

His initial answer is a hard  _no_. But then he realizes he’s surrounded by child-soldiers equipped with guns and lord knows what else they’re harboring in this facility. If they are given commands to execute him, would he fight back?  _Should_ he? Few look old enough to drink, let alone think outside whatever dogma they were fed to enlist in the first place. He chews his lip until he tastes copper.

No. No, he wouldn’t.

With that, he comes to a decision that he is… _good_. Which is laughable, considering his entire evaluation was self-conducted, horribly biased and wholly objective. Still. He  _feels_ that he’s good.

So does that mean that everyone else in this facility is bad? Should he be angrier than he is scared and compliant?

By the time his second meal arrives, he comes to two conclusions:

  1. He’s one of the good guys. (Maybe.)
  2. He doesn’t know what the  _fuck_ is going on.



[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

By the fifth “day”, the pattern changes.

He was fiddling with his shirt, counting loose threads (he was at 14; this shirt is awful quality) when he hears grinding gears. At first, he thinks it is food incoming, but he was fed an hour earlier. He leaps to his feet, shoulders tensing.

The guards open the door and light pour in. He blinks hard; he forgot how blindingly white the halls are. A fleet of sentries stands in a line around the door. He smells fear and anticipation. After nearly a week of solitude, their musk is overwhelming. He feels nauseous and dazed.

“ _Двигаться вперед!_ ” the one with a caterpillar mustache shouts. He squints at him, confused. What the fuck is he supposed to do when he doesn’t understand the language? “Война Aнгел, я приказываю вам двигаться вперед!”

Caterpillar Face moves for the gun strapped to his hip. He makes a guess and walks towards the door with hurried strides. This seemingly appeases the guard since he re-holsters his pistol. The leader of the parade marches forward, taking a zigzagging route longer than the last.

They bring him to a communal shower. It’s moist and steamy, recently used. The maddening white scheme remains consistent here, too. Shower heads, pipes, and knobs line the tile walls. Caterpillar jabs his shoulder with the butt of his baton, and he gets the memo. A different man hands him a bar of soap.

“У вас есть 5 минут, чтобы дезинфицировать.” One of them whisper something into Caterpillar’s ear, and a second later, he translates the sentence to, “5 minutes! Shower now!”

He waits for a moment for the group to clear, but it’s obvious the peanut gallery has no intentions of parting. He bites back a curse and strips his clothes. God, he hates this shit, but he desperately needs a shower and he can’t spend his five minutes having a debate with his pride.

The water is unsurprisingly cold, but that’s not the problem. The issue lies in the hysteria bubbling in the pit of his stomach— _down, down, down until he can’t see light from the surface anymore and he can’t breathe and he can’t_ —

He pinches himself hard and focuses on describing the pain.  _Grounding_ , his subconscious tells him. It works.

He lathes his skin and does the best cleanup job he can with no washcloth, a group of strange men watching him and a pathetic time limit.

“Time is up!” Caterpillar shouts in choppy English. He considers taking an extra minute underneath the spray, but he’s naked and the guards are trigger happy and he’d rather not take that risk. They toss him a white towel—he’s so  _sick_ of the color now—that feels like sandpaper, but pats the water off his body anyway. Next, they throw him a hospital gown that leaves his ass exposed in the back, and he swear he’s seen a shitty gay porno that started something like this.

However, once they manhandle and bind him to a wheelchair, he begins to fret. His heart slams against his ribcage, and no matter how many times he tries to twist his wrists free of the restraints, he can’t.

“Hey,  _hey_! What the fuck is going on?” he asks for the first time, and like he expects, nobody offers a response.

He faintly recollects a process like this when he broke his leg (another useless memory). But that was in a medical center with a kind staff, his nurse was a sweet Hispanic lady and he definitely wasn’t  _hogtied_ to the fucking seat then. Hell, he hasn’t seen a single person of color here, let alone another  _black_  man—which is enough to make his skin itch.

They wheel him into the elevator. He gives up fighting; he’ll save his energy for when he can actually do something. For example,  _punch_  one of these sons of bitches in the face.

“ _Тема 00804330, War Angel, уже сел на вал. Выберите действие_.” The automated voice drones.

“Принесите нам в смотровой кабинет. Делайте это быстро, мы уже поздно.” Caterpillar Face responds, his voice rough with irritation.

“ _Да сэр. Ускоренные гидравлика была активирована_.”

He recognizes this exact voice sequence from his first trip in the Hellevator. This time, he properly steadies himself in his chair when the shaft surges upward.

The elevator jolts to a stop then opens after its fair share of clunking and clacking. This floor is a lot different from the one he arrived in five days ago. For starters, there are only three people in the room this time. They all sport lab coats and wear nametags and insignias. On the breast pocket, there’s a black squid with a human skull for a head. It’s familiar, but out of reach in his mind. Doesn’t change the fact it’s a stupid design, though.

They roll him onward.

He recognizes the man from the first day,  _Aust_ , who spoke into a recorder and referred to him as ‘it’. There were two others: another man,  _Johnson_ , with washed out, shaggy blond hair, a pudgy stomach and disheveled clothes and,  _Bauer_ , a rail-thin woman who could give a toothpick a run for its money, with her gaunt face and sinister eyes. If it comes down to it, he bets he can take all of them (sans the guards) since none of them look particularly athletic—just…uncanny.

“Я вижу, вы, наконец, решил приехать.”

A spurt of fear emits from Caterpillar Face, but before he has the opportunity to speak, Johnson interjects with a flippant flick of his wrist.

“Can we cut this shit out for a  _minute_? I don’t speak Russian; I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”

His heart skips. He recognizes that accent—it’s that thick Boston twang. Boston, Massachusetts. The home of clam-chowder, fish, and chips and a downright mediocre football team.

All but two of the guards are dismissed. He is released from his wheelchair. Aust comes to him first, resting his hand on his shoulder like they’re old friends. He resists shrugging it off.

“You are lost, aren’t you?” his face is odd and impassive and his voice perpetually monotone. He assumes it’s supposed to calming, but it’s disquieting on an instinctual level. Like the fright, that chills your spine when people wear masks of other’s faces. “It is okay to be lost. All we’re doing today is a physical; nothing to worry about.”

He slides his hand off and turns to throw a sheet over an uncomfortable-looking examination chair. Although Aust disturbs him, he seems the most approachable in the Lab Coat Trio. So he swallows his nerves and asks, “Where am I?”

“You are somewhere safe.”

That isn’t a real answer. He tries again.

“ _Why_  am I here?”

Aust pauses thoughtfully. “Because you need us. Just as much as we need you.”

More evasive bullshit.

“Alright, 20 Questions, how about you take a seat in the goddamn chair before we make you?” Comes Johnson’s aggravated quip, tapping his gloved hands against his arm. He resists scoffing; he can take his ass down in a second, but he submits and seats himself.

Aust is true to his word. He was here for nothing else but a checkup. A rather thorough checkup, but a checkup nonetheless. They examine his vision (20/10—a rate he didn’t think existed), his height (two inches shy of 6 feet; this being the bane of his adolescence) his weight (158 pounds if his metric-to-standard conversion is correct) and do bloodwork.

Dr. Aust also checked his stamina, flexibility, strength and a whole bunch of shit he can’t recall anymore. They put him on a treadmill and link him to a plethora of monitors ( _he watched the numbers tick up; 103 kilometers per hour, 104 kilometers per hour, 105—)_ as he sprinted. Aust topped off his exam with a full body CAT scan.

When he’s finally forced back into the concrete vault, he adds more things to the  _List of Things I Know_ (he’s getting really fond of making lists):

  1. He’s one the good guys. (Maybe)
  2. He’s not in prison. ( _Imprisoned_ , yes, but there’s too much of a clinical lean for capital punishment)
  3. He passed Stage Five with flying colors (whatever the fuck Stage Five was).
  4. He can probably outrun a car.
  5. He  _still_  doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.



[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

_“Are you sure you wanna’ do this? I mean, you don’t have to. I’ve dragged you into enough these past couple of months, I…I can’t ask you to—“_

_“Cut the shit, Rogers. If I wanted to high-tail away from danger, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you right now.” He shrugged, a grin easing the tension from the conversation. “Plus, if it’s not me, who else is gonna’ follow you headfirst into squid-Nazi territory in subzero weather?”_

_“Well, it’s not Tony.”_

_“It’s_ definitely _not Tony.”_

[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

When his door opens again an hour after his second meal the next “day”, he isn’t shocked. When they command him out of his room in broken English, he doesn’t waver again. When they give him five minutes to cleanse, he spends each minute purposefully rather than panicking underneath the showerhead. Unfortunately, he gets strapped back in the clunky wheelchair, but he doesn’t resist. He just  _waits_.

 _“Тема 00804330, War Angel, уже сел на вал. Выберите действие.”_ the automated voice whines for the third time. Caterpillar Face is nowhere to be seen, so another soldier responds back in Russian. The shaft ascends slowly.

Seemingly they aren’t late today.

They arrive at a different level. It’s bigger than the exam room, and the Lab Coat Trio becomes the Lab Coat Party. He sums at least twelve people milling around in the space.

This room is void of the white décor. Instead, everything is industrial, hard and metal, each object serving a purpose. Numerous machines whirr, buzz and beep amongst the low prattle. Wires intersect one another on the floor like venomous snakes. The smell of exhaust tickles his nose—he digs his fingernails into his palm—but the tang of bleach and other sterilizing products overwhelms it.

In the middle of the huge room is a narrow, flat table with belts on either side. Then next to it a machine that hums loudly, and an IV drip beside it. Medical carts on either side. A wall with his CAT scan projected onto it.

It’s an operation set up. This is an operating  _room_.

His stomach plummets. He tugs against the straps, but immediately hears guns cocking. He stops struggling, considering he has a better chance coming out of this situation if he isn’t shot.

Why the fuck are they gonna’ operate on him? He feels fine—fuck, he’s  _more_ than fine and has the evaluation to show it!

From there, everything moves in a manic, surreal blur. The soldiers haul him off the wheelchair and  _drag_  him to the narrow bed. Hold him flat while thick steel clamps section off his limbs. One around his wrists, another around his elbows, his knees, his ankles, and finally his neck. Then leather straps are fastened, rendering him utterly immobile and at their mercy. The circulation halts in at least two appendages.

A tall woman forces a mouthpiece between his teeth. An even taller man adjusts the blinding overhead lights. Somewhere, an IV is administered. Well, at least he thinks it’s an IV. Within the past couple of minutes, he’s had enough needles entering him that he feels like he’s a pincushion. Or a junkie, because vertigo hits  _instantly_ and  _s-shit—_

He hears the rattle of a cart rolling towards his bed. From the incessant clangs, it sounds like a full house of surgical apparatuses.

He tries not to sob.

“Subject 00804330 is detained. All sedatives and dampeners have been administered.” Aust steps forward at the end of his bed. His vision blurs, but that voice—sounding warped and delayed and  _satanic_  in his trance—would follow him all the way to the gates of Hell.

Aust’s dead stare is only emphasized by the facemask. He pulls the recorder from his pocket, flips it on, and then brings it to his mouth. “Stage Six initiates at 6:30PM accordingly.” He throws a glance at Johnson, who holds his very own, thick needle brimming with a thick substance he knows would hurt like a bitch if he could actually feel his body.

“ _Diazebital_  strain X is prepped for administration.”

Johnson eases the needle in the juncture between his jaw and his neck. He feels nothing more than a pinch.

“ _Adcilin Alglucofinil_  strain IV is prepped for administration.”

He’s too lost in his mind to know where the next needle goes. He just stares bleary-eyed at the overhead lights as they fade from white, to gray, to black. However, even in his sluggish, drug-induced stupor, he hears:

_“Subject 00804330 is prepped for internal reconstruction surgery.”_

[м о н о х р о м н ы й]

 _The wind laps at his sweaty neck, cooling his face under the pink glow of sunrise. The sun barely peaks over the horizon and the streets are quiet—well as quiet as the commercial part of D.C. can be. But it’s good enough for him. The running, the cool air, the sunrise—it helps clear his mind from stress like a spring cleaning. One of his men attempted suicide yesterday—he tries not to think about how missed it when it is his job to_  notice  _shit like that—and his today head is fuzzy with it. Maybe if he exhausts himself, he won’t have the energy to ruminate about Jerold bandaged in a gurney on suicide watch._

_He hears the heavy, fast footsteps of another jogger behind him._

_“On your left!” the man shouts as he speeds past him. He just nods even though he doesn’t see it. He goes back to soaking in the pleasures of his morning run._

_The next time the man passes him, it is thirty minutes later. The sky steadily swaps its deep purple and pink hues for a pale blue tinged with white and yellow._

_“On your left!” he calls again._

_“Uh huh,” he puffs, although the man is already making a distance between them._

_The third time the son of a bitch passes him, he is fed up._

_“Don’t say it—don’t you_  dare  _say it—“_

_“On your left!”_

_“_ C’mon _!” he rushes as fast as he can to catch up, but it’s a lost cause. The guy must be an Olympic track star or taking anabolic steroids by the pound. Pride wounded, he gives up on his run and heaves against the base of a tree. By then, activity in D.C. starts up to its usual humdrum._

_“Need a medic?” the dick has the audacity to ask once he strolls over by the side of the tree. Yeah, he’s a sore loser; he’s not ashamed. He lets out a tired hoot._

_“I need a new set of lungs. Dude, you just ran 13 miles in like thirty minutes.”_

_“I had a late start.” He says, planting his hands on either side of his tapered hips. He swipes his tongue over his lips._

_“_ Really _? You should be ashamed of yourself. Take another lap.” He looks away for a second, then turns back. “Did you just take it? I assume you took it.”_

_He laughs and it’s a nice sound. For a dick, at least._

_“What unit are you in?” he asks like he just knows. And maybe he does. Maybe there’s just this vacant look that haunts a veteran after a war, no matter how charming his gap-toothed smiles are._

_“58 th Pararescue, but now I’m workin’ down at the VA.” He lifts up his arm, and the man helps him to his feet. His hands are warm and calloused._

_“Steve Rogers.” He says with that well-practiced all-American grin, a unique mix between cocky and shy. He can’t help but smile in return. After all, this is the same guy whose face was plastered all over his room until he shipped off to basic training. He reveres him, even though he’s still kind of an ass._

_“Sam Wilson.”_

[m o n o c h r o m e]


	2. subsist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [warning: sexual harassment, fetishizing/hyper-sexualization, anti-black racial slur, homophobic slur, child abuse]

**ii**

**существовать**

[s u b s i s t]

Sam Wilson.

It came to him like a prayer when he awoke, his name mouthed wordlessly through chapped lips stained in blood. With that, like an elegiac swan song, the last of his resurging memories conclude.

He supposes he should miss them. After all, they brought some (much needed) semblance of self during his existential crisis. However, his desire to remember ceased; the things he _can_ are too much— _too_ harrowing, _too_ vehement, _too_ macabre—and the rest can go straight to hell for all he cares.

They don’t take him back to the concrete vault. Instead, he spends an undefined amount of time imprisoned in the medical exam room, hooked up to some machine or another. Just watching the four white walls as if it’s a fascinating thing in the facility. This room is an immutable hellscape with time only marked by his regular fits of fevers or drug-induced delirium.

He can’t feel anything. Maybe he doesn’t want to.

Dozens of doctors mill in and out of the room. Most drop in and observe him from beyond a one-way mirror he can partially see into. Others wheel carts in, toting dozens of syringes and pills like it’s a platter of food he ordered through room service. More often than not, they command him to move around for a physical, but he doesn’t comply. Instead, he sits and stares until they grow frustrated and move him themselves. Like a doll (or rather a puppet, because dolls are pampered and pretty and fragile and he is sure Barbie’s never had someone rearrange her insides.)

Through the turntable of faceless medics, Aust is a constant; hell or high water, that man will _always_ be present with his dead stare and recorder in hand. He stands in a far corner while the other doctors perform whatever task they are asked to. The whole while, he speaks flatly into the device about the most clinically graphic things Sam’s ever heard. Aust probably doesn’t expect Sam to understand the medical terminology he uses, but for some God forsaken reason, he _does_. He _does_ and he wishes he fucking _didn’t_.

If he could vomit, he would. But the only thing he’s been able to choke down is pills, and he doesn’t want to be stripped naked and hosed off again (the first time he threw up on himself was shortly after returning from his coma, trying to scarf down the food on his tray. Apparently, he doesn’t have a stomach anymore; at least not by standard means.)

Today, there’s three people in lab coats surrounding him, nimble fingers working like a well-oiled machine as they pull out IVs and other machines attached to him like leeches. He can barely see Aust from his peripheral, but he can hear him clearly.

He always speaks like he isn’t here. But the way Sam is feeling, he _isn’t_. He’s floated off to some lurid wonderland where everybody knows his name and 00804330 is just a bunch of arbitrary numbers and maybe War Angel is a superhero from a comic.

 [с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

Sam trembles violently in the throes of sickness, his face, and neck slicked with perspiration. He’s caught between nauseatingly hot and frigid cold as if his body no longer knows how to regulate its temperature. The rough sheets are strewn halfway around his torso; it’s the closest thing to a compromise he can manage.

It’s during fevers that Sam becomes this febrile, overwrought bundle of nerves. His senses are thrown into overdrive; every slight touch, smell and sound augments to absurd proportions. His hearing, however, receives the brunt of this hypersensitivity.

— _tick-tick-tick-tick-tick—_

It’s like they planted a bomb in his chest and Sam is just waiting for detonation. During the long stretches of silence—which, by the way, his entire “day” is comprised of—it drives him _mad_.

_—tick-tick-tick-tick-tick—_

He inhales.

 _—tick-tick-tick-tick-tick_ —

He exhales.

— _tick-tick-tick-tick-tick_ —

If the tapping stops, would he die? Because all he wants is for it to end. He doesn’t care how it happens. Even if he has to smother himself with his fucking pillow, he’s willing to do it. It just won’t—

_—tick-tick-tick-tick—_

— **STOP**!

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

The scars are pronounced, deformed lines threaded with stitches across his chest. They’re ghastly and puckered and leak yellow-pink fluid, leaving his sheets gummy and in need of cleaning often. His entire abdominal region is engorged, almost grotesquely, like a cartoon character when they ingest way too much food.

Which is funny, because they only feed him once a day now.

(He supposes it isn’t as funny as he originally thought.)

Worst of all is his back. It's blistering hot and hurts like a bitch when he moves, but there's no reflective surface, let alone a mirror, to see what kind of wreck they left in their wake. But he’s flexible. God, more so than he ever was, he thinks. He curls an arm over his shoulder and runs his fingers down it, listing off the names of the muscles in his head. Another one of the many things he just _knows_ , like second nature.

_Semispinalis capitis._

_Splenius capitis._

_Deltoid._

_Rhomboid minor_

_Rhomboid major._

He brushes against something sharp. Hot. Metallic. He stills.

He removes his left hand and uses the other to feel along the center of his back. There’s exposed metal, running up the middle like train tracks. He drags his fingertips along it, feeling the pattern and the shape. Not like support braces, but like...like…

_Thoracic eleven._

_Thoracic twelve._

_Lumbar one._

It’s his spine.

He shakily removes both hands and leans his head on the hard pillow. He swallows. Blinks. Inhales. Exhales.

_—tick-tick-tick-tick-tick—_

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

He has a stroke.

It happens in the middle of an unrewarding physical conducted by Dr. Petrov. It starts when he loses feeling in his legs. And his tongue feels like cotton. Then follows a sudden dizzy spell and he realizes he can't fucking read. He tries to speak, but a jumble of noises tumble out of his mouth. Panic fills the air by the time he’s convulsing in his gurney, medics shouting at each other and filling their syringes.

Next thing he knows, he's back under, and he oddly hopes he still has his left arm intact when he wakes up.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

_Daylight pours through the window. The sun kisses his skin and its warmth swathes him like a blanket. He exhales and pulls his sheets further up his body so that his face is halfway covered and his nose is buried into his pillow. It’s soft. Unreasonably soft for a shitty motel in backwoods Texas._

_Almost makes Sam forget he’s on a wild goose chase across America, searching for a rogue Soviet assassin, who, by the way, tried to kill him._ Twice.

_The motel door swings open and Steve stumbles in with his arms loaded with three fast food bags. At least two of those are Steve’s._

_“Honey, I’m home!” he sings around a mouthful of fries, kicking the door closed with his foot. Sam rolls on his back and laughs, laying an arm over his eyes to block the light._

_“Oh, shut up, Steve. Just gimme’ my damn food and sit down somewhere.” Steve throws him his bag. Sam catches it effortlessly. He reaches in but hesitates once his fingers graze the aluminum wrapping._

_“Angus steak burger? With bacon?” he tests, raising his eyebrow with each question._

_“Damn right; you don’t eat anything else.”_

_“That’s ‘cuz everything on Whataburger’s menu_ sucks _.” he retorts, unwrapping it. Sam eyes his burger in all its fatty, processed glory before putting placing it back in the bag; Mama Wilson taught him hygiene—he isn’t eating with morning breath. He slips out of bed, steps over the duffel bags crammed with guns and explosives_ —damn it, Rogers, how many times I gotta’ tell you to put your shit up _—and into the bathroom._

_“We’ve got a new lead. I think it’s for real this time.” Steve mumbles, shoveling fries into his mouth like a human trash compactor. There’s salt clinging to his shirt, a smear of grease on his cheek, and stubble all over his chin. He looks less like Captain America: National Icon, and more like Steve Rogers: Sloppy Eater Who Doesn’t Know How to Utilize the Damn Napkins. Sam wrinkles his nose when he licks the salt off his fingers._

_“Is that so?” he tries to sound buoyant, but they’ve been at this for three months now. Every lead has been “for real this time” and Sam is desperately trying to keep up this charade that he believes the Winter Soldier_ —Bucky _will be found_.

 _Really, their entire hunt is pointless. It isn’t as if Barnes is still out there assassinating people from rooftops. Aside from a couple of blown up Hydra bases—something nobody’s feeling any loss about—he hasn’t_ done _anything worthy of chasing him after. Hell, even the U.S. government has virtually thrown in the white towel, although he’s sure Stark and Rhodes have something to do with that._

_Maybe Steve needs closure. Maybe he needs to learn to quit being Captain America all the time. Maybe he needs…_

_“Yeah, yeah. The numbers I’m getting from Nat are kinda’ vague right now, but she’s working on it.” He squints at the computer screen, then grabs for his soda. “It’s somewhere in…Guatemala?”_

_“Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to Guatemala.”_

_Steve snorts. “I thought you said you said you hated jungles?”_

_Sam doesn’t know what Steve needs. But he is going to be there for him when Steve figures it out._

_“Eat a dick, I’m trying to be a good friend.”_

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

Sam claws through the cloud of post-op fatigue. He blinks the blurriness out of his vision, then faces the mountains of pain meds on the tiny nightstand. He wonders forebodingly what would happen if he swallowed all of them. Will he overdose like a rock star in his prime? Or will his metabolism filter it all out before he has the chance to?

He feels much better than he did before, which isn’t saying much. However, his body stops quavering and feeling so goddamn ill that he can’t focus. He’s recovering. Even if his killer headache says otherwise. He still feels displaced, like he’s just renting this form until he can find the original. He doesn’t think any medicine can fix that, though.

He flexes his bicep and watches sinewy muscle ripple underneath his dark skin. He bends his arms in ways that should be painful, but he’s capable. He might as well be made of noodles. Sam traces his finger along the branded digits, eyebrows pinched together.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

At least once a “day”, a fleet of doctors come in to gag him with tablets, shoot him up with needles and rub salve over his back, more or less in that order. The needles are downers, dumbing his acute senses to a basic level. The pills make his head foggy and sluggish, but other than that, he has no clue what they do. The gel is cold, tingles, and then makes his tissue hypersensitive before numbing. Usually, the tasks are recycled between the same six or seven bored medics.

Today, however, Dr. Aust leaves his designated corner, a tube in the hand his recorder should be. Sam hesitates for second before sitting upright and shedding his shirt. The process of coating his back with salve doesn’t take any longer than five minutes. However, the procedure gets drawn out for a whopping fifteen minutes of chilling, latex-clad hands pawing his sore flesh. Hands traveling up the length of Sam's spine. Thumb pads grazing over his metal spine.

Even with dampeners coursing through his veins, he can smell excitement on Dr. Aust. But a different brand than the pungent terror that clings to the sentinels whenever he’s nearby. The air is charged with pheromones— _heady_ with it. The desire to crawl underneath a rock—or in a hole or under the _sea_ , maybe—augments, because he’s dealt with _enough_ and he sure as shit isn’t dealing with this, too.

Mercifully, someone conspicuously coughs, and Aust’s hands fly off him. He mutters something breathlessly in Russian, then caps the gel and disappears.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

Dr. Petrov, another regular alongside Dr. Aust, orders Sam to stand. Instead, he continues to stare past her ear, like the wall beholds answers to the Seven Wonders of the World. On her way out, she mumbles “nigger” loud enough for him to catch.

It’s the only English he ever hears from her.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

“You can walk.” Dr. Aust states while he eats. The slop in front of him vaguely looks like corn. He thinks the lumps of brown are chicken nuggets. He eats it still, with his bare fingers since they never give him utensils. Maybe they think he’ll gouge someone’s eye out with a spork. Or slit his wrists with a plastic knife.

Sam _can_ walk. He knows it. After the stroke, vigor returned to him by a tenfold. He’s a ball of unused energy—like he’s perpetually on a sugar high—but refuses to leave his bed. Refuses to comply. Not after what they did.

He bites into the nugget. It tastes freezer burnt and chockful of additives. When he swallows, it goes down his throat like cotton.

“You can walk,” Aust repeats, studying him. “You have the cognitive function and gait speed to perform dual-task walking, yet—” he takes a moment, then restarts. “ _Yet_ you sit.”

Sam pushes soggy corn around his tray with his index finger and pretends he doesn’t hear anything—something he’s getting damn good at. He’s waiting for his Academy Award to arrive through the mail.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

Sam’s escaping. Leaving. Skedaddling. Getting _the_ _fuck_ outta’ this place, even if he has to MacGyver his way out with a paperclip and a roll of duct tape.

He spent an indefinite amount of time completely numb to the world, gazing vacantly at objects and people. Trying to cope through disassociation—a shitty mechanism that didn’t work, in case anyone was wondering—because if he's not here mentally, how can they possibly hurt him?

Well, it turns out they can still make it hurt. And they can make it hurt like a _bitch_.

It's on Dr. Aust's umpteenth visit with that stupid dead look and stupid recorder, documenting his analysis and calling him "it" does he realize how much he hates this shit. Getting his entrails harvested. Being captive underground, somewhere obviously far away from the law. Feeling like livestock with a serial number burned into his arm.

He is sick and tired of being ‘ _it_ ’. He's sick and tired of being _War_ _Angel_. If someone refers to him as Subject 00804330 again, he might just punch a hole through their abdomen.

He apparently has the strength to do it.

He just wants to be Sam fucking Wilson, whoever the hell that guy was— _is_. Because he's pretty sure he didn't have to put up with this. And with a name as common as that, his life had to be equally uneventful. Well, at least he hopes.

He doesn't know where to begin planning his Great Escape (title caps necessary, because if he survives this, he’s naming his award-winning biography after it.) He clearly has no access to a blueprint. The hallways are boundless corridors of white that he doesn’t have any hopes of navigating. He doesn't have a weapon, and he's pretty sure everyone down to the medics is armed to the teeth. He hasn't been able to operate the elevator since he first arrived at the base and even _then_ his trip was superintended by Dr. Aust.

So that leaves him...severely confused, defenseless, immobilized, and—yeah, nowhere.

Sam eyes the empty tube of salve left on the nightstand, fingers twisted in his sheets.

Despite his hapless situation, he has a leverage. Dr. Aust is…disturbing, to say the absolute least. He derives some debauched pleasure from Sam’s suffering and doesn’t even see him as _human_. But Dr. Aust “likes” him, which is far more than what he can say about Bauer or Johnson. His tactile memory kicks into action and the ghosts of Aust’s fingers creep up his spine.

He’ll exploit his fixation. Use it for all it’s worth to escape before they take what's left Sam Wilson away.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

_The ride is tense. It's hot. Sweat clings to his skin and the air is stifling with moisture, exhaust and salt. His dark covert-op gears blends in with the gloomy jeep interior, and for a moment he can pretend he isn’t actually here—merely a spectator. He’s toying with the Velcro straps on his vest when he feels a gentle nudge on his shoulder._

_"Yeah?"_

_And then there's Steve with his stupid Captain America uniform, all wrapped up in the U.S. flag. This guy just can’t do discreet. He pulls off the mask, almost to signify, "I'm talking to you as Steve Rogers.” Many people couldn't discern the shift in dynamic. Sam, however, isn’t “many people.” Steve’s lips lift in a small, mawkish smile._

_"You know I've got you, right?"_

_"Yeah, I know."_

_His grin grows a fraction as he holds his helmet in his hand._

_"Now put your mask back on and stop looking at me like that before Natasha throws up in her seat."_

_"Too late." she deadpans from the front of the vehicle. Steve laughs before fitting the helmet over his head. And like that, he's back into hero mode._

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

The next time the physicians visit him, Sam already has his game plan mapped out in his head. It’s not thorough, more of a sketch than anything, but it’s the best he can manage when his mind is fuzzy all the time. Dr. Petrov sits in front of him, her face flat and hair clipped up in a bun. Dr. Aust’s leer burns holes through his skull.

“Stand.” Dr. Petrov commands, accent thick. He just glowers at her, the same way he’s glowered at her the last fifteen times she told him to. “ _Stand_.” She repeats, and this time, Sam’s eyes shift to Dr. Aust for acquiescence. Emotion flitters over his face, stunned. He hesitates before he nods.

“You are allowed to stand.” He reassures, and Sam does just that. When his feet hit the ground, he nearly tips over. After being bedridden for Lord knows how long, standing upright is dizzying.

The other two doctors scribble furiously onto a clipboard. He’s immediately bombarded with questions— _how is the sensitivity in your legs? Are there difficulties breathing? Can you turn around?_ —but Sam checks with Aust before he does anything. He nods furiously, pen shaking in his grip. It’s the most emotion he’s seen from him.

From there, they guide him through other performance assessments. They start with the basics, like walking and running; stretching and testing his ability to track things with his eyes. The entire time, as Sam complies for the first time in weeks, Dr. Aust rattles passionately—well, as passionate as monotone can get—into his recorder. When they finish, Sam only shaves off a small portion of the verve simmering underneath his skin. The doctors look content; Dr. Aust is harder to read, but from the endorphins emanating from him, Sam did something right.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

 _The way Steve typically dresses makes his Uncle Leroy's socks and sandals combo look like high fashion. His outfits aren’t..._ bad _, per se. He’s just always dressed like a disgruntled grandpa who’s several years behind on the latest trend. At least Steve wasn't around for the early 00s; Sam couldn't handle him looking like the sixth member of_ NSYNC _._

_Tonight, however, is a change._

_He looks great. More than great, really. Steve’s hair is parted and slicked back, bringing some justice to comb-overs. His black tux is snug around his chest and his slacks hugs his strong thighs. His outfit is on the edge of swanky and causal—definitely a selection from Stark’s stylists. Steve sticks his arms out, anxious._

_"So?"_

_"You look good, Rogers." he says, levelling his voice. Yeah, he looks good alright, but Sam has to keep it Strictly Platonic™. Which, honestly, is hard to do when Steve’s ridiculous hip-to-shoulder ratio is emphasized by the tux. For fucks sake, the man is shaped like a Dorito._

_"'Really wish you could come with me." Steve grouses, adjusting that stupid American flag tie that Sam is sure will piss Tony off and make Natasha snort vodka out her nose. "This whole yakking thing isn't me. The big parties and the extravaganza and bumping elbows with politicians…it's too much."_

_Sam nods. He's still the scrappy brat from Brooklyn underneath all those muscles and Pan Am smiles. He’s still grasping his newfound importance in the world._

_"Sorry, man. All Avengers schmooze fest; I'm not exactly invited."_

_"You could be, you know. An Avenger. I can ask Tony."_

_Sam laughs and rubs his sweaty palms on his jeans._

_"If you've gotta' ask your best frenemy if I can join the Scouts Club, I think that's saying enough. Plus, I need some time to sort through my own shit before I’m ready to go back in.” Steve’s face falls a fraction, but he grins nonetheless._

_“Alright, Sammy—suit yourself. I guess I’ll have to drink_ Château Lafite _all by myself again.”_

 _“Yeah, that’s a real tragedy,_ Steven _. ‘Can’t imagine anything worse than sipping one-hundred-thousand-dollar wine in a fancy skyscraper. That really must suck for you, wow.” Sam says as he plops himself on the couch and grabs his plate of cold, leftover pizza._

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

 _I’m gonna’ kill him_ , Sam decides resolutely, his jaw painfully set. _I’m gonna’ fucking_ kill _him_.

Sam already knows Aust is a cruel piece of shit—he has the scars to prove it—but _this_? This is grievous. The asswipe sits on the metal chair he pulled out next to Sam’s bed, legs folded while one hand balances his plate and the other cradles a spoon.

Dr. Aust’s food looks and smells much better. The aroma of a freshly prepared meal masks the usual antiseptic stench. The combined scents of fresh vegetables and spices roll in his lungs and stirs his palate like never before. Sam tries not to look tempted. Instead, he focuses on pushing through the meat—he _refuses_ to call it steak, though it’s clear that’s what it’s supposed to be—he’s dubious of and carrots he’s found mold on.

Sam forces down his meal and then drops the plate on his bedside counter. He doggedly ignores the itchy IVs tangled around his body. He turns on his side, opposite of Dr. Aust and screws his eyes shut, beckoning sleep to take him. It doesn’t. He lies awake, forced to listen to Dr. Aust chewing past his ticking heart and beeping monitors.

He wants to stab a pen through his ear drums.

Dr. Aust gets up, and Sam stiffens. He clears his throat behind him, and Sam is determined to completely ignore him. However, he realizes he has to entertain this bullshit if he ever wants to see daylight again. So he sits upright and props himself against the pillows, expression hopefully not sour.

Aust dips his spoon into his soup and holds it to Sam. Despite himself, Sam blinks owlishly at him. He grabs for the utensil, and Aust almost angrily yanks it away.

“Open,” he commands, and Sam does. He clumsily slips the soup into Sam’s mouth, and regardless of his outward composure, Sam can see that Dr. Aust is shaking. Sam wishes briefly that he wasn’t administered any downers that day so he can smell what kind of carnal emotions are running through him.

Because _what the fuck_.

Sam rolls the broth on his tongue as if he is tasting wine, savoring the flavors. The soup is creamy and thick. Bits of vegetables—cucumbers and onions, although he can taste traces of more in the broth—crunch under his teeth. Hell, he thinks he there’s even _actual_ beef in this.

Dr. Aust spoon feeds Sam the remainder of his soup, his breath growing shallower and fingers wobblier, until, _finally_ , he runs out. He gathers his plate and exits the door hastily.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

The second time Dr. Aust insists on feeding Sam, it’s with whatever mystery lies in his tray. The third time, he doesn’t even wait till they are alone; he just pulls out a seat while the doctors are working and shovels food into his mouth. After the fourth time, Sam decides he’d rather stop eating altogether.

 [с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

_“Alright, so ‘The Bodyguard’ or ‘Trouble Man’?”_

_“We’re back at this again?”_

_“You bet your lily white ass we’re back at this again. This is what miles of open road, no signal, and scratched CDs gets you.” Sam says, reclining against the creaky passenger seat. Because honestly, they could’ve gotten a better car. A car that doesn’t look like it’s running off of Sam’s prayers and Steve’s lost hopes and dreams alone._

_“I think I liked it better when you were singing the 90s Greatest Hits. You’ve got some golden pipes, Wilson. If this whole superhero thing doesn’t work out, you can always fall back on that.” He says in a perfectly serious tone, but the horribly concealed smirk gives him away. The little shit._

_“Yeah, I’m sure Beyoncé is shaking in her heels. But flattery isn’t gonna’ get you anywhere; answer the question.”_

_“Fine.” He pauses, hands flexing over the steering wheel. “The Bodyguard.”_

_“Really?”_

_“Really. You can’t get any better than Whitney Houston.”_

_Sam nods, looking out into the dark, dusty road. Cornfields speed by in a blur, and outside is dry and hot, even deep into the night._

_“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that. Your turn.”_

_“Okay, uh…Motown or Kansas City blues?”_

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

He’s ushered out of his room, in a shower and into a wheelchair in record time. By now, he completely associates this process with iniquity but manages to stay still as they strap him into the chair and inject downers that have him more doped up than ever.

His senses are turned down so _low_ , he can’t even hear the ticking that’s plagued him. Or feel where Dr. Aust’s thumb draws circles against the back of his neck as he wheels him around. The only thing that makes it past the drugs is the whine of the wheels that sounds like a skipped track note on repeat. He boards the elevator.

“ _Тема 00804330, War Angel, возвращение на базу. Доктор Dolph Aust прибыл на валу. Административный контроль активируется. Выберите действие._ ”

All of a sudden, a slot opens in the wall and a screen flickers to life. There’s a bunch of boxes connected by lines and numbers and—

It’s a map.

Sam tries not to crane his neck to look. He narrowly catches a glimpse of the screen from his peripheral, but Aust quickly steps in front of it. The elevator chimes as he touches the screen.

“ _Выбран уровень._ ” the map reseals and irritation coils in his stomach. At least he knows there’s a guide somewhere in the hell hole. He counts this as a win.

They arrive on a floor a few above the one he’s stationed in. When the elevator opens, he’s greeted with a barren, steel room and another pair of baby-faced soldiers. They straighten upon Dr. Aust’s arrival; Sam doesn’t need his acute smell to know they are petrified. The soldiers stand before a dense, arching door with words that read:

“ **ВЫСОКОЕ НАПРЯЖЕНИЕ: НЕ ВХОДИТЬ**

HIGH VOLTAGE: DO NOT ENTER”

Both guards press their thumbs against the pad. After a moment, the light above the entryway shines green. A buzz sounds and the hydraulics hiss and clink as the metal splits.

This room is by _far_ the largest he’s seen out of the handful of levels he’s taken. The ceiling is impossibly high and crammed with pipelines and cables. An entire wall is dedicated to electrical switchboards and hazy monitors, where a line of men decked in protective gear operate them. A plethora of other unknown hardware fills the room—none of them surgical, luckily. A tarp cuts the room in half; behind it, most of the commotion takes place.

Shockingly, music blares from the overhead speakers. It’s classic rock. Led Zeppelin. Johnson pops out from behind a machine, face smeared with oil and his shaggy hair flying every-which-way.

“This song is the greatest goddamn thing to ever happen to this world, ya’ know? It just…” he strums an imaginary guitar and thrashes his head around to the beat. Sam decides that he hates him. From Aust’s long-suffering sigh, he does, too.

“You wanted to recheck the spinal wiring.”

“Yeah dude, just throw it down over there, I’ll get to it in a sec.”

The aides fasten him to a table stomach-down. There’s a hole cut out where his face goes. It’s too wide, but he’s just glad he’s not being smothered by leather.

“Hey, _you_ —“ Johnson snaps to an orderly. “Go grab the power cables and plug those bad boys right in. Oh, and turn up the voltage while you’re at it; we need the system fully activated for this exam.”

He feels something clamp around the base of his spine and— _oh_. The sensation is stranger than it is painful. His entire back is static—just like his leg when it falls asleep. Random sparks of feeling run down his appendages and to the very tips of his fingers and toes. He involuntarily flexes his shoulder muscles, and he finally understands what it’s like to have ghost limbs.

Expect all of his fucking limbs are present, and he sure as shit doesn’t have any arms protruding from his back.

(Well, as long as Dr. Aust deems spine-arms unnecessary.)

Johnson pokes and prods seemingly forever. Sam can’t understand Johnson’s technobabble. At least with Aust, he understood the procedures, but for all Sam knows about engineering, Johnson is instructing him to make green bean casserole in Punjabi. When he finishes, he pops the cables off Sam’s spine. The tingling stops instantly.

“The wiring is a lil’ faulty ‘cuz of some incomplete cords, but once we graft the skeleton and connect the wires to the ports and the ports to the scapula, the problem should go away. I guess.”

Graft the _what_ in the _where_?

“You _guess_?” Aust hisses. “We do not have the resources for _guessing_.”

“We ain’t got the resources for _anything_! I am working bare bones here! I’m bootlegging this entire operation and doing the best with what we got—which, by the way, _ain’t shit_!”

Johnson and Dr. Aust breathe heavily for a minute before the tension deflates. Sam is hastily unfastened, thrown into the wheelchair and carted into the elevator. He barely adjusts himself before the shaft goes flying up.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

Dr. Aust shows up to Sam’s room alone two “days” later while he sleeps. Sam automatically jerks out of his sleep the moment Aust locks the door behind him. After all, this is the same man who replaced his spine with a fucking metal rod and gave him what sounded like a time bomb for a heart—he doesn’t think Aust would stop any of his advances because Sam says _no_.

But he just slides into the dimmed room and props himself against the wall. No doctors, no recorder, no lab coat, as if peeling back layers of himself. Not vulnerability, but openness.

Sam doesn’t _want_ his openness. He wants to get _out_ and maybe dropkick a guard or two in the process.

Aust pulls a chair from the corner of the room and drags it next to Sam’s bed. Metal rakes against the tile. The shrill is ear-piercing. He sits down rigidly. Taps his foot. Rubs his arms along his shoulders. Like he’s cold, or nervous even.

Then he speaks.

“I had a daughter,”

And Sam already wants him to shut the fuck up. But he doesn’t, because nothing is destined to go Sam’s way.

“A little girl, only eight years old. With pretty blonde hair and pretty blue eyes. She…she looked like her mother.” He digs through his pants pocket and removes a leather-bound book. It is roughly the size of a wallet and is swollen with paper. He pries it open and tugs a photo out, facing it to Sam.

Aust’s child had unruly tresses, a toothy grin and was posted on a tree stump, a medallion of some kind dangling from her neck. The photo is worn and frayed at the edges; as if every day, he pulled it out and touched it. The color long since washed from the picture.

“She was smart. Brilliant. Gifted, probably. I could always find her around my house with a book—she wouldn’t be seen without one. She was athletic, too. A very zealous child packed with all the verve of adolescence and surplus. If she wasn’t engrossed in a book, she was outside practicing sports. She wanted to play football. The academy never would’ve let her then, although that never stopped her from trying.”

Sam turns away. What the hell is the point of this story? Is he supposed to feel sympathy for the devil because his kid was decent?

“She was hardly seven before she developed primary colorectal lymphoma.” _Colon cancer_ , his mind mechanically fills in. “In one fell swoop, my daughter was reduced to a frail, sickly thing, hanging on only by God’s good graces. She couldn’t eat. She was always bleeding. She couldn’t control her bowels anymore; I had to put her in a diaper. It was like taking care of an infant all over again. Thinking back, I shouldn’t have wasted so much time and money trying to find a proctologist. They said she was hopeless—too far along. Bumbling halfwits, all of them. Everyone was sure she was going to die.”

Dr. Aust frantically sifts through his photobook, then slaps a pile of photos onto Sam’s sheet.    

“But then I fixed her.”

Sam stops listening to what he says after that. He stares wide-eyed at the pictures. There are photos of the crude tools he used—a dull scalpel, a standard sewing kit, staplers—all taken from odd side angles. A photo of him with his gloves on. A couple glamor shots of over-the-counter medicines.

Dr. Aust shows his daughter after the operation. She doesn’t look happy that her entire intestines were replaced with fucking plastic tubes. She looks _miserable_ and _agonized_ and _lifeless_ , gazing vacuously into nothing.

He explains how his daughter was never fast or strong enough for football. That even though he loved her, she still had those “pesky imperfections” holding her back. So he got rid of them all, just like he got rid of her cancer. And her spleen. And two of her fingers.

She hardly looked like a child, let alone a _human_ , when Dr. Aust finally decided that she’s in mint condition. Her little body was engorged and littered with bruises, cumbrous muscles—too big for anyone her age—distended underneath her skin. And to top it off, her mouth was sewn shut.

“She wouldn’t stop biting me.” Dr. Aust offers with a sheepish grin as if talking about the time his daughter broke the vase rather than him mutilating her beyond recognition.

“She was perfect, but humans hate perfection. People are so satisfied wallowing in mediocrity. Our society claims that perfection is unattainable when rather we are too biddable to reach for it. _Always_ settling for less. Unwilling to take a risk in order to transcend the standard we’ve capped ourselves with—it’s _disgusting_. Perfection _is_ tangible and the people holding us back from reaching the pinnacle of our existence need…they need to be _purged_.” he takes a moment to reel himself in, returning back to his usual monotone.

“I made her perfect.” says as he reaches forward and ghosts his finger over Sam’s cheek. “I want to make you perfect, too.”

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

Sam Wilson’s Comprehensive List of Really Shitty Facts:

  1. Aust is bat-shit fucking _insane_.



 [с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

_Sam smiles at Frank as he holds the door open for him, a little bounce in his step as he enters the VA office. The A/C blasts throughout the building, offering a cool respite from the heat outside. He shoots Frank a quick thanks before the other man limps back to the meeting area. He joins Derrick, who opted to sit on the floor instead of the hard plastic chairs arranged in a semicircle._

_This isn’t where he thought he’d be after the Air Force, but this is good for him. He likes it here._

_He hasn’t been here for more than three months, but he knows everyone by name. There’s Johnny, a veteran from Vietnam missing a leg, but more than makes up for it in personality. There’s Susan, who returned from Iraq a year before he did. There’s Lila, a young neurotic woman who overshares stories about her sex life. Ashley, who only feels comfortable sitting next to Susan, and Sam is pretty sure she wants to ask Susan out if the furtive, nervous glances mean anything. Then there’s Derrick and Frank and a couple other stragglers who seldom stop by. They’re a peculiar bunch, but Sam appreciates their enthusiasm._

_The session ends after an hour and forty minutes, an additional ten minutes added to the runtime so Lila and Johnny could argue which foreign base has the shittiest climate. Nobody complains, however; everyone’s just glad her tangent on the duality of lube ended._

_As Sam walks back to his car, he’s stopped by Derrick. He resists jumping when he appears from the shadowy corner of the parking lot._

_“Hey man, what’s goin’ on?” Sam starts with an easy grin. After counseling this guy for almost five weeks, he learned to initiate the conversation. Otherwise, Derrick would glare until he got uneasy and then stalk away._

_He pushes a hefty slice of cake into Sam’s limp hands. Sam advised he take up baking hobby last week; he had no idea Derrick actually went through with it._

_“I made way too many. Like. Three times too many. Maybe four—I don’t know. Not enough space in my house, and I don’t really have a lotta’ folk over to, you know, eat ‘n stuff. So they just kinda’ sit there until I get around to eating it and…and I’m just_ one _man, and_ one _man can’t eat three cakes in one sitting. Or maybe he could, but I’m not that guy. My ma says I’m gonna’ get fat if I keep eating 'em like this and…” He shrugs and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Here. It’s velvet. No homo.”_

_And then he turns heel and leaves as suddenly as he came. Sam’s face splits in a grin. Derrick still has a lot of issues to resolve, but this is so much better than when he was offering to make homemade pipe bombs as a way of thanks._

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

His plan does what it’s supposed to. But it doesn’t _work_.

Dr. Aust plays into his hand easily; he’s easily swayed by Sam’s resilient faux-submission. _That_ part of the plan bears success; the militia of guards lessened to two, and he isn’t administered such potent doses of downers anymore. Dr. Aust _trusts_ him—or rather, trusts that he won’t run away. However, he isn’t allowed to leave his room. This base might as well be infinite, for all he knows about its layout. He’s still weaponless and no tangible step closer to escaping this hellhole.

He still prides himself in his little progress, nonetheless, but how far will he have to go to _leave_?

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

Dr. Aust shows Sam what he did to his dog. Sam is sure no dog has any use for five legs.

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

Dr. Aust pops in Sam’s room in the middle of his sleep again. Sam should be used to it by now, but, honestly, who the fuck can get used to the guy who sliced you open and plucked your insides out like a game of _Operation_? He doesn’t bring any food. Instead, nudges the wheelchair in his direction. Sam’s brows furrow.

“Sit.” He pushes the wheelchair next to Sam’s bed. Sam barely resists cursing and throwing a tantrum; he can _never_ get a full hour of rest in this place. No extra doctors or guards follow them to the elevator, and this is a testament to Sam’s work. They return to the level from last time. Aust touches the pad, and the doors open.

It’s void and black. Sam guesses it must be night and everyone retired to bed. That or everyone decided to take a lunchbreak at the same time. Either way, an unsettling ambiance hangs thick around him. His mouth goes dry and his senses swing into full alert.

Dr. Aust pushes Sam past the tarp obscuring the other half of the floor. Aside from the blinking switchboards, this section is as dark as the other. Dr. Aust flips on a light. The brightness burns Sam’s eyes.

From the ceiling, two large robotic claws reach down. They curl around a mass metal. He faintly recognizes the shape past his shock. The sleek pointed form that curves sharply. All sweptback and streamlined, layered with fine plates of steel he thinks are— _fuck_. _Fuckfuckfuck_.

It twitches and spasms and adjusts all by itself like the remnants of a lizard's tail after it’s been severed. Like something alive.

Like a _parasite_.

— _tick-tick-tick-tick—_

“You are going to be perfect.” Dr. Aust hums in Sam’s ear. “So perfect.”

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

He’s still in Stage Six, but he doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be here. The amount of doctors checking on him wane and the number of questions he’s asked dribbles to maybe four or five. They must have more than sufficient data now that he’s complying. His window for escaping before something else fucked up happens dwindles every “day.”

Sam nervously thrums his fingers against the sheets. Dr. Petrov holds a stethoscope to his chest. He knows she can hear his heart whirring in HD, but he doesn’t care. He needs to get _out_ and get out _now_ —more than he’s ever needed before and—

A resonating drone shakes the foundation of the facility. The lights blink out for a half a second before returning at half-power.

Petrov’s eyes snap open, mouth agape and body stock-still. The other medics freeze and gawk at each other, bug-eyed with hearts hammering louder than his. The sharp stench of panic and dread fill his nostrils even _with_ his dampener administered so, they must fucking _be horrified_. But horrified of what? The only fiends in this facility are _them_.

Unless…unless they’re not. Unless there’s something even _bigger_ and _badder_ lurking somewhere in these white halls.

“Скачок напряжения?” Petrov whispers. Sam can detect a lilt of panic in her voice. Dr. Aust leaps to his feet, pocketing the recorder and cutting this session short.

“Я думаю так. Нам нужно уйти сейчас и проверить на других.” he hisses, and the gang quickly packs their utensils in a blinding speed, shoving their equipment into carts and cases haphazardly. They evacuate Sam’s room in a panicked frenzy. He bites his lip. Hard.

Johnson was talking about lacking resources a couple “days” ago, but could this possibly be what he meant, too? Power surges? Are they not able to keep this facility up and functional?

Sam sits in his bed, clenching and unclenching his fists. The silence is deafening because now he can hear _everything_.

_—tick-tick-tick-tick—_

His insides rattling.

— _tick-tick-tick-tick_ —

The air rushing into his lungs as he breathes.

— _tick-tick-tick-tick—_

And then everything explodes in a screeching siren. It’s so loud, it vibrates the floor and his bed and _god damn it_ his ears are _throbbing_. Red lights flare harshly in the dim white room, washing the room in blood.

“ _КОД КРАСНЫЙ. ПРЕДМЕТ 00653908 УЦЕЛЕЛ КОНТЕЙНМЕНТ УРОВЕНЬ. CODE RED. SUBJECT 00653908 HAS ESCAPED CONTAINMENT LEVEL_.” the automated voice blares through the speakers. The warning resounds through the walls. From the gap underneath the door, he sees the hallways are also stained with red lights.

This is a facility-wide panic.

Sam snatches the tubes from his body as he sprints out the bed so fast, he stumbles into his IV drip stand and smashes his toe against the wheel. He rushes to the door and— _of fucking course_ —there’s no knob or handle. Just a blood-recognition pad. He slams his thumb on it and it pricks his finger. Text flashes on the LCD screen.

00804330 ЗАПРЕЩЕН ВЫХОД.

— _tick-tick-tick-tick—_

He swears and slams his fist into the wall. He presses his ear to the icy door, straining his senses past the downers, sirens, and incessant tapping. He focuses until he isolates a single noise: frenzied, uneven footsteps barreling down the halls; a labored “ _help_!” tearing through a raw throat.

Sam backs up and shoulders the door with all of his strength.

“I’m in here! _I-I’m in here_!” he screams. His back bursts in pain, he’s sure he reopened a stitch and Aust is gonna’ be _pissed_ but who— _who the hell cares_?! When it becomes clear the door isn’t budging anytime soon, he pounds his fists into it. “Hey!”

_“H-help! Help me!”_

“I’M IN HERE!” he roars.

_“F-fuck—God—somebody please!”_

Sam’s voice cracks as he wails how he’s _right there_. Not even _20 feet away_. But Sam remains unheard and unseen like he doesn’t exist.

Sam presses his ear to the door again and listens, his neck slicked in sweat and body coiled with tension. He hears a missed step, and— _thump_!—the man falls.

 _No, no, no, getupgetupgetup_! Because next, he hears a series of heavy footsteps not far behind and the acrid fetor of gun oil floods his nostrils. _Get up!_

17 rounds go off. After half a minute, the sirens silence. Everything returns to its blank white state. Like somebody hit the reset button on time.

“ _предмет 00653908 был остановлен. Subject 00653908 has been terminated_.”

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

Not even an hour after the breach, Stage Seven commences. From the angry whisper match he only half listens to, Johnson and Aust don’t want to run the risk of another power surge. Or another escape. Or another _something_.

He can’t feel anything. He’s so _numb_ and _tired_ already. Because apparently, he’s not the only prisoner in this facility. And the last guy who tried to escape was murdered only a few feet away while he stood around worthlessly. What is the point of branding himself as a “good guy” if he can’t do _shit_ when people need saving?

Some fucking hero, he is.

He drifts through the pre-op priming. Hardly pays attentions to the direction he travels in the elevator, or the new floor he arrives in until he’s already there. A hulking mass of industrial-size equipment folds against the roof. A table stands in the center, only held up by two metal poles stemming from a hole in the ground. They don’t bother with any drugs, just strap him in place.

Johnson looks excited, a bounce in his step, throwing and tossing a remote in his hand. Aust also brims with enthusiasm, but on a much more tacit level. He holds the recorder to his lips.

“Stage Seven initiates at 11:34PM, four days in advance from its original date. With consensus amongst myself, Dr. Bauer and Johnson, we can conclude that this acceleration is safe. All dampeners have been administered before entering the Aquatic Room. Subject 00804330 is prepped for hydrogenic stasis.”

With that, Johnson slams a button on the remote with zeal. The ground shifts underneath him and the floor splits then retracts in either direction. Sam doesn’t know what lies beneath him, but he can see the dancing whorls of refracted light. The soft _plap_ of liquid as it laps against the perimeter of the tank.

_—tick-tick-tick-tick-tick—_

The poles click and then horrifyingly _lower_. They descend until Sam’s body submerges with freezing cold water. Until the bed is seated at the bottom of a wide, deep pool and _locks_.

His lungs scream and he thrashes against the restraints vainly, forced to watch the floor—now the ceiling—close with him entombed in this underwater grave. And he’s _down, down, down until he can’t see light from the surface anymore and he can’t breathe and he can’t_ —

[с у щ е с т в о в а т ь]

_—do anything other than sink to the bottom of this fucking lake and be glad that sharks don’t live in freshwater. His blood saturates the water, and between the blood loss and the suffocation, he’s surprised he’s made it this far down. They say dead bodies float. But not when they have a busted 70-pound wing-pack substituting as cinderblocks._

_He just hopes nobody lets Steve dress him for his funeral._

[s u b s i s t]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sdfghjnklnkl a whole lot happens in this chapter, I just realized. Im sorry if this is a jumbled mess, this is literally broken into 22 pieces im so s o r r y and there's probably hella mad mistakes, but it's almost 4am and ya girl's mad tired so imma have to catch the errors later  
> -tla


	3. exodus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [warning: graphic violence, cruel and unusual punishment to minors, graphic death of minors, sexual harassment, graphic body horror, anti-black slur, attempted suicide, mentions of cannibalism]

**iii**

**исход**

[e x o d u s]

 _Rrrrrrrr._ Bright lights. White. Cold air. Cold floor. Tile. Sweat. Fear. Horror. _Rrrrrrrr_.

He comes to as if he's being strangled: clawing at his neck, gasping for breath, back arching off the icy ground. It takes him several minutes to slow the barrage of raw senses down to a manageable trickle. Once he's no longer inundated by sensory feedback, his eyes flutter open.

Sam first realizes that he's no longer in the Aquatic Room, chained to the bottom of a tank brimming with icy liquid. Rather, he's sprawled on the cold ground with grout scratching at his knees and hips. Next, he recognizes he's in a new room. One constructed something like a dance studio—mirrors and all— with its vast and empty design. There's a door at the far right corner, but of course its handle-less with a blood-recognition pad beside the frame. A toilet and sink reside in the left corner. As far as he knows, he's the only one here.

Sam shakily pulls himself upright, his muscles unsteady from disuse. He hears something drag against the floor. No, he  _feels_ something— _somethings_ —dragging against the floor. The sensation careens up his spine and resonates in his brain. Ice sets in as he finally identifies the whirring that had nothing to do with his heart. His back flexes and—

No. No  _no_   ** _no_** — _fuck_.

Distorted shadows appear on the ground. It's black against the white tiles. Wraithlike. Abhorrent _. Disgusting_.

" _I want to make you perfect, too."_

He itches as if a parade of red ants march underneath his flesh. His stomach coils tightly. His mouth runs dry and all the moister relocates to his clammy hands. Repulsion is hot in his throat, and it takes all of his strength to keep the bile from flying out of his mouth.

They infected him with that—that  _parasite_. That  _disease_ and it's devouring him whole, gnawing at his tissue until there's nothing but bones and hollow insides. He feels so fucking  _revolting_ because he's  _too late_ and his stigma is  _grafted into his spine_.

This isn't his body. Not anymore.

He keeps his eyes focused on the floor, refusing to look at the mirrors; as if he is a child and object permanence would cease to exist if he just closes his eyes forever. A stuttering breath escapes his lips. He clenches his fists and scrounges up the courage.

 _Peregrine falcon_. Largest of the Falconidae family. Fastest animal in the world. Renowned for its speed, reaching over 200 MPH during their dives. Sweptback, narrow wing shape allowing nearly zero air resistance and peak aerial maneuvering.

It's hard to recognize past the layers of metal deforming the figure, but still, he knows.

— _tick-tick-tick-tick—_

He examines his malnourished, yet muscled frame in the mirror. His unkempt beard and hair, making him appear more vagrant than anything. The ugly scars are oddly level— _how fucking long was I in that tank?_ —across an abdomen that's still puffy, but no longer gruesomely distended. He trails his fingers down the high cheekbones, full lips, and broad nose. One hand on his face, the other hand touching his reflection. He tries to reacquaint his disembodied mind with its body.

It doesn't work.

He twists his torso—god, he will  _never_ get used to what he is capable of—and finally catches a glimpse of his spine. It's all chrome and almost white in contrast to his dark skin. It's surprisingly similar to a regular spine, expect much thicker. And, you know. On the outside.

He's tempted to touch the mass of metal protruding from his back, but refrains. The sensation is jarring. They look heavy as shit—so much metal and Kevlar substituting ligaments, tendons, and muscles, it's hard to imagine it _doesn't_ —yet he's not crumbling from the uneven distribution of weight. If anything, he's standing perfectly upright.

He experimentally shifts his weight on his left foot. Involuntarily, the right wing extends in the opposite direction. He switches legs, and his left wing does the same, making automatic postural adjustments to keep him centered on his feet.

His greatest fear is confirmed. That means these wings are deeply integrated into his neurological system—his  _brain_.They're reading his sensory input. Corresponding with his sensorimotor system. He tentatively shifts closer to the wall, and his wing mechanically retracts to accommodate the loss of space. Spatial orientation. Occipital sensory reception. Proprioceptive response.

So simply put, if— _when_ he escapes, there's no fucking way these things are coming out.

" _You are going to be perfect." Dr. Aust hums in Sam's ear. "So perfect."_

The door opens. Sam whips around. A guard pushes food through a slot, but Sam doesn't want to eat. He lays on the floor and stares at the shell of a man staring back.

[и с х о д]

Stage Nine (not  _Eight_ , apparently since he was underwater a fuck-lot longer than he originally imaged) as far as Sam understands, is physical training. Dr. Aust, Dr. Petrov, and Johnson guide him through a few basic motions with his wings; "recalibration" they called it.

Controlling the wings is much harder than it looks. It's not as easy as "think about it" and they move however he intends them to. If that was so, many disabled people would be up and running by the power of their will alone. Instead, it's all about relearning his muscles. Several failed attempts to move  _this_  and  _that_  when he isn't sure what his anatomy is anymore.

Sam watches the process, horrorstruck. He tries to keep his face neutral during the therapy—pretend like this addition doesn't violate him more than anything ever has. It's hard. Especially when Aust leers and Johnson stares and Petrov glowers like he's a disgusting stray all of them let get too close to home.

[и с х о д]

Sam doesn't have a bed anymore. He doesn't think he could sleep in one, anyway. He lies on the floor. Tosses and turns and tries to find this nonexistent comfortable position. Between his ticking heart and the low, nearly undetectable drone of the wings, he stays up.

[и с х о д]

His new imprisonment brings more things for him to do when there's nothing to do. There're even more gaps of nothingness and muteness in this PT area than there was in the medical exam room, now that he doesn't have doctors manhandling him at least twice a "day."

He counts the perimeter of his confinement (1304). How many steps it takes to walk directly from the door to the opposite wall (235). How many times he can try to remember the lyrics to the only song he knows—excluding the garbage Johnson plays in the overhead speaker, because not only is that guy a dick, he's also a music elitist.

He does everything physically possible to do an empty room without ever looking in the direction of the mirror.

[и с х о д]

After several hours of grim deliberation, Sam decides to take his PT into his own hands.

He's reluctant at first. Doesn't want to get attached—doesn't want to utilize anything the enemy gave him, because it feels like  _giving in_ —but he quickly realizes that no matter what, he's escaping. And it'll be a hell of a lot easier to escape if he knows how to operate his own body.

After all the shit they put him through, they  _still_ aren't done; every moment he spends in this facility gets worse and worse.

His entire body is attuned to functioning his wings. He makes a mental list of the functions—the first useful one to add to the arbitrary ones stored in his head. He "remembers" what these do as he goes through the motions, like rereading a book he hasn't touched since middle school. Although, he knows it's the Artificial Memory that Dr. Aust spoke of when he first arrived. Some muscles adjusted the placement of the plates. Others move the base of the wings. He bows the wings with another.

With little strain, Sam extends them to their full length. A whopping seventeen feet give or take on either side, an overall  _thirty_ - _five_ -feet across. The wings arch and the tips spread.  _Vertical takeoff mode._  He flexes his muscles again, and the metal grinds and retracts and into a short, stiff form that almost pleats along the shape of his spine.  _Standby mode._ He flexes his shoulders and they extend to the wingspan of maybe fifteen feet.  _Standard mode_.

He glances at his hand with a frown. He flexes two fingers attentively and—

_Schlliiing!_

An additional layer of primaries and secondaries unsheathe, lethal and whetted. Like somebody fused a row of Swiss army knives to the end of his wings. He does the motion again, and they draw up into the mass of feathered metal. Again, and they're back out, glinting menacingly in the light. Suddenly, he understands the reason for all the experimentation. He understands why every aspect of himself has been modified. He understands why they call him War Angel.

 _Combat mode_ , his mind tells him.

God, he was looking for a weapon, and then they made him one.

[и с х о д]

" _Jesus shit, it's hot."_

"Language _."_

" _Don't 'language' me, asshole; I'm_  dying _."_

" _You're not dying, you're being dramatic."_

" _It's literally one-hundred-and-two degrees! You would think for a guy people call the Winter Soldier, he would be camping out—I don't know—in_  Siberia  _or something. Anywhere else_  but  _the sweaty ass crack of Central America."_

"Sam."

" _Fine._  Fine _. I'll shut up, but you're buying my silence. I think there's a Subway somewhere 'round here."_

[и с х о д]

He supposes things are bad when he starts normalizing the awful shit that happens in this facility. Like when Dr. Petrov calls him a nigger. Or when Dr. Aust springs an erection while spoon feeding him. At this point, he's categorized those moments as regular occurrences in his "day"—a minor inconvenience rather than a slow-rotting detriment to his mental health.

Oh well.

However, one thing he can't get used to are the child soldiers. Every time he spots them, it's disconcerting. All dressed up in their black uniforms. Dour, yet baby-faced and rosy-cheeked like a fucked up set of Cabbage Patch Kids. Some with the dead eyes of a man who's seen too much. Others obviously fresh, trembling and damn near ready to keel over at the sight of him.

Initially, he was sure they were fed some dogmatic propaganda that convinced them that this—whatever  _this_ is—is righteous and they should enlist. Of course, his notion was riddled with holes (teens are impressionable, but not  _that_ goddamn gullible), but how else do you round up hundreds of boys willing dedicate their adolescence guarding an illegal facility in Fuck Ass, No Idea?

Trick question: you  _don't_  and they  _aren't_.

It's not until the middle of his PT does this become clear to him. Dr. Aust and Johnson run him down the bodily commands to operate his wings. Just simple finger gestures that fine tune the featherlike plates during flight. Sam doggedly ignores Dr. Aust's cold hand resting on his waist. If Johnson notices, for once, he doesn't say anything. As usual, the guards remain seen and not heard around the PT room. All stoic and silent, yet smelling strongly of anxiety and hormones.

"Activate combat mode, P1 through P5, only," Johnson commands. With some caution, he flexes his wings, feeling just like any other muscle in his bicep. It feels like trying to single out and wiggle a toe when your foot is crammed in a boot. A bit hard to do, but soon each set of additional feathers extract under his accord.

He smells the danger before it arrives. There's a sharp spike of fright from one of the sentries. Sam turns to eye him inquiringly, and that's push that sends the rock sailing off a cliff. The sentinel is all puffy and red-faced, neck slicked with sweat and he fumbles around with the strap holstering his rifle to his back. Dr. Aust snatches his hand away from Sam's waist, cross.

"Солдат, в чем смысл этого?"

"Демон! Это  _демон_!"

All he does is gasp and sputter and heave until his gun is out. Cocked. Loaded. Pointed directly at Sam.

Fucking  _hell_.

_Ping-ping-ping-ping!_

He's in a dark cocoon of metal before he even realizes it, the bullets bouncing uselessly off the wings and onto the floor. He lets out a dazed, stuttering breath, his heart drumming loudly in his ears. A series of angry and surprised shouts explode around the room.

"Задержать его!" someone roars. Footsteps pound against the floor. Sam warily parts his wings, dismantling his temporary safe-spot, and gapes bewildered at the scene before him. Instantly, the guards have the deviant sentinel on his knees, arms contorted backwards in a position that looks agonizing. The boy's face is ruddy and soaked with tears.

"Прости! Сожалею! Я обещаю, что это никогда не повторится! Мне очень жаль , пожалуйста!" he pleads past hiccups and tears. His heart hammers so loudly in his chest,  _Sam_ can hear it. Dr. Aust steps forward with hard, calculated steps until he stands a breadth away. The boy stoops as low as he can go and covers Aust's shoes in sloppy, wet kisses until they're shiny with his saliva.

"Пожалуйста, доктор Ауст! Я просил тебя! Помилуй меня, это никогда не повторится!"

Dr. Aust looks down and stares right through him with those cold, dead eyes.

"Ваша слабость меня возмущает." And then he kicks the boy square in the jaw with a painful snap. Sam steps forward, wings bristling in warning, but Johnson pins him to his place with his eyes. Daring him to uncover his ruse. "Поэтому, я заставлю тебя пример. У вас нет места в этом объекте. Вы," he points at a soldier, possibly the second youngest after the boy who shot at him. The soldier shakily steps forward. "Показать ему никакого милосердия. Показать ему не слабость."

The boy clumsily grabs his gun and points it at the boy's head. Dr. Aust scoffs and snatches it away before turning it upside down, the butt of the gun facing upward, and pushing it into his hands.

The first hit sounds disgusting. It's all teeth clattering and bones cracking, a spurt of blood shooting across the floor. The second, somehow, is even worse. The butt of the gun catches the soldier's cheek at an odd angle and— _God_. But Dr. Aust doesn't let him stop, even when he begins to sob. Not when the hard sound melds into a wet squelch. Or when the boy's head is disfigured, his jaw completely fragmented and eye dribbling from its socket. Not until there's only a cavity where a face is supposed to be.

"Возьмите его к политика Cдерживания Yровень" Dr. Aust says, kicking the arm of the corpse with disdain. "Я уверен, что субъекты голодны."

After a moment of horror-induced stupor, the guards seize the body by its legs and drags it out the door. The offcuts of his jaw tears off and tumbles to the floor with a wet splat.

"Mother of  _fuck_ , man! Can you ever do this shit somewhere else; it's fuckin'  _nasty_." Johnson hisses, covering his nose and mouth an arm.

"Order only comes through pain."

— _tick-tick-tick-tick—_

Sam just sways on his feet and throws up the little food he ate on the floor.

[и с х о д]

Sam Wilson's Comprehensive List of Really Shitty Facts:

  1. Dr. Aust is bat-shit fucking insane.
  2. He's so  _fucked_
  3. and so are these kids.



[и с х о д]

" _He's perfect." Sam proclaims, hands on his hips as he peers through the cage. The dog's a runt and is missing an eye from a birth defect, but as he's reaching over to bite some ticks on his ass, he knows this is the one. Steve raises and eyebrow and cocks his head at him._

" _Are you really sure 'bout this? Pets are a lot of responsibility, Sam. They need lots of attention and we really aren't home—" Sam stops Steve before he can sound any more like his mother._

" _I've already got this whole thing planned out, man. The Avengers need a mascot and I don't think Tony or Nat are exactly marketable to children." He gestures for the young assistant at the shelter to open the cage door. He crouches and gathers the golden retriever in his arms. "I'm gonna' name him Cap'n 'Murica."_

" _That's an awful name."_

" _Pot and kettle, Steven." He hands the dog to Steve, and he holds it wearily with_  that  _expression—the one where he concurrently_   _looks reproving and constipated. Sam smiles brightly and scratches the dog behind his ear. "Hey, Cap'n, meet Captain."_

_The dog just lolls out his tongue and drool drips onto Steve's shirt. He makes a face._

" _Why do I have a feeling you've already got ten of these jokes already stored up somewhere?"_

" _That's because you're_  right _."_

[и с х о д]

In this all white room, there's a stain of red. The blood never gets cleaned up. It remains on the floor along with rotting morsels of flesh and teeth. His entire room reeks of death—he can't escape no matter how far he burrows into a corner. It fills his nostrils. Clouds his lungs. The faceless body is singed into his memories—hot and nauseating at the forefront of his thoughts.

[и с х о д]

"Open," Dr. Aust almost coos, one hand cradling a spoon of slop, the other curled around the back of Sam's neck. After a moment, Sam does, his stomach winding and twisting. "Хороший мальчик." He says with a pleased hum, tossing the spoon in Sam's tray.

Sam hates eating; at this point, he'd rather starve. He's tired of this degenerate touching him—running his finger over his lips as he chews. Holding his hand.  _Petting_ him. Even when Aust isn't present to spoon feed him, Sam's tactile memory ensures he doesn't forget that even the most mundane aspects of his life were debauched for someone else's consumption.

Luckily (or unfortunately, maybe), he discovered a workaround. An hour after all of the personnel exits his quarters, he makes a break for the toilet, shoves a finger to the back of his throat and purges until his stomach is as empty as he feels. Yes, his throat is raw and he knows that he's wasting energy that could be used to escape and every part of his mind is screaming  _this is extremely unhealthy_ , but fucking hell, it's the only thing that brings him some peace of mind. He'll deal with the repercussions when he puts several hundred miles of distance between him and this awful facility.

There's a ghost of a smile on Dr. Aust's face as he gathers Sam's empty tray. He looks so proud, like he just trained his dog how to shit outside rather than the living room. Sam wants to punch his teeth in. He wants to break every finger on his hand—better yet,  _tear_ the goddamn thing off of his body and let him bleed out. The thought is  _satiating_ , he realizes with a start.

He doesn't remember being this violent. He supposes they made him this way.

[и с х о д]

He's midway through switching into  _horizontal takeoff mode_ when the overhead lights flicker. There's a click followed by a trice of darkness before the lights return at half-mast.

"Christ on a stick." Johnson hisses under his breath. Like that, the session ends early.

[и с х о д]

" _You can't keep using the turtle shell."_

" _Why not?"_

" _It's basically cheating! I don't even know why they still have it in the game."_

" _Ah c'mon, Sammy, don't be a sore loser. I won fair and square."_

_"Fair and square my balls! You were in the last place until the last five goddamn seconds!"_

" _If you're that sore about it, we can have another rematch, alright?"_

" _Uh-uh—no. We're playing Street Fighter next; I'll show you a game that takes some real skill, you cheating fuck."_

[и с х о д]

PT goes by quickly. His artificial memory coupled with Dr. Aust and Johnson's instructions has him well acquainted with the functions of his wings. He looks at himself in the mirror and slips into combat mode; watches the wings transition, the honed set of primaries unsheathing with little prompting. He's never seen metal like this before; they're flexible and pliant, yet look like they can slice through titanium with ease.

Sam imagines himself in battle. He ghost fights, visualizes taking down an enemy two times his size and strength, yet a fraction of his celerity and agility. Jab here. Jab there. Kick. Block. Swipe. Evade invisible fists with avian grace. The wings arch and hum as they sync with his swift movements. He doesn't need anyone flanking him with these hulking masses of impenetrable metal over either shoulder, operating on reflexes faster than any man.

[и с х о д]

He starts noticing little things. Like the bruises and welts on the guards; particularly the younger ones. How gaunt, malnourished and ill some of them look. There's a surfeit of sentinels, but they aren't unending. He notices that when one screws up—they were late taking him to a floor, didn't properly secure his room, so on—they aren't seen again. Ever.

[и с х о д]

Day dreaming is always interesting; he never knows what he'll get. Sometimes, he'll conjure up pleasant daydreams. They're all macabre, demented and disgustingly gruesome, but cathartic nonetheless. Dr. Aust is usually the subject of his violence. Occasionally, its Dr. Petrov or Johnson, but it all ends with him covered in blood and viscera, drying underneath the sun in a place far away from here. He should probably be sickened how graphic his "pleasant" daydreams are.

Other times— _most_ of the time, really—his daydreams turn sour. Fast.

It'll start off like they all do; him laying supine in an unknown forest. Him unwittingly walking into the world's most elaborate death trap. From there, it spirals out of control. He imagines getting stuffed full of cotton (he can't tell if his mind is making a doll joke or a slavery joke—either way, it's pretty fucked up.) He imagines waking up during surgery and watching his heart get ripped out and replaced with a bomb with a smiley face drawn on it. He imagines his lips being sewn together.

His arms are replaced with another pair of legs.

They cut him open and spoon feeds him his broiled, unseasoned liver.

Dr. Aust decides he's done taking care of his erections by himself.

(He should probably stop daydreaming.)

[и с х о д]

" _Are you okay? Are you comfortable? Your leg looks a bit twisted, you want me to fix that? Christ, I should get the nurse, shouldn't I? I'm gonna' get her."_

" _For the love of God, Rogers,_  sitdown _."_

_Steve shoots Sam a look, half his body already out the door. After a moment of hesitation, he sighs and resigns to his seat. He visibly deflates in the tiny hospital chair, looking small with his slumped shoulders and downcast eyes._

" _Sorry." He mumbles, and Sam knows this isn't about Steve's eighth near-panic attack within the four hours he's been at Sam's bedside. He kicks his shoe against the floor with a frown._

_Sam's hospital room—private and five-star, thanks to Tony's prodigal tendencies—is completely covered in flowers. Azaleas, yellow acacias, forget-me-nots and a plethora of unknown flora occupies every possible surface. Hell, there's three bouquets on the floor he has to be mindful not trip over when he gets up to take a piss at night. He's sure if Natasha didn't intervene somewhere, there'd be another delivery of white dittanies on its way._

_When Steve says he's sorry, he apparently means it with all of his heart._

_(And all of his paycheck, too. Honestly, where the hell do you find two dozen hydrangeas in the middle of winter? In_  NewYork _?)_

_Really, with the way he's acting, one would think that Sam is on his deathbed, ready to keel over and ascend to the afterlife. All he did was crack a few ribs and break his leg during a nasty emergency-land on a rooftop; nothing that wouldn't heal after a month of lazing around his house. Yet here Steve is, pulling out all the stops with his excessive worrying and self-reproaching and dewy blue eyes._

" _S'fine. You've just gotta' stop calling the nurse, man; there's only so much shit people are willing to put up with because you're Captain America." Steve cracks a grin, but it disappears as quickly as it comes. He won't meet his eyes, either. Sam resists sighing. "Steve. Hey, look at me. Talk to me." he says a bit softer._

_It takes a moment, but he does. His expression is blue; out of place with the swirls of reds, pinks, and yellows he's surrounded by._

" _I really hate it when you get hurt. You know. Because of me." Sam wants to interject but forces himself to be quiet. "And I know it isn't realistic in our line of work that none of us get injured. You're my partner so you're always gonna' have my six, but why…_ why  _does it always feel like I always lose people the most when they're trying to save me?" He bites his lip and looks away. "It probably doesn't seem like it, but I don't_ need  _saving. I just need you to be safe because you're my best friend and who the hell knows what I'm gonna' do without you."_

 _Best friend. It feels like the thorny rose stems snake around his lungs and_  squeeze _. Right, how can he ever forget—they're just friends. He's on the same level as Natasha and Bruce and Clint. He knows he shouldn't be so soured by Steve's heartfelt apology, but the entire gesture is undermined by a fission of hot frustration, because_ —for fuck's sake _—Sam's stupidly in love with the guy who'd probably make him the best man at his wedding._

_All he manages is a nod in Steve's direction. Suddenly, his cast is too itchy and the smell of roses becomes too much._

[и с х о д]

Sam sags against the toilet, the caustic taste of stomach acid and whatever shit he ate heavy on his tongue. He spits the residual bile away, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

He's glad no one's checking his weight anymore.

[и с х о д]

Today bears gifts. And by "gifts," Sam means more bullshit he doesn't think he's mentally capable of handling. Once he blows this joint, his militia of therapists are going to have a fucking field day with him.

Dr. Aust carts a phonograph into his room while he's sprawled half-asleep on the floor. He's woozy from pills and downers, but focused enough to tense once he arrives. Instantly, he awakens and sits upright, lips tilting down in a frown.

Aust wipes the dust off the record player with a dry rag, then retrieves a vinyl from underneath the cart. He places the disc on the player and after a second, a tune belts off. Trumpets and horns play behind a chanting male voice; he doesn't understand the words, but recognizes the German easily enough. Dr. Aust sighs, his shoulders slumping as the song fills the room, cracked and old like aged whiskey. He sits beside Sam on the floor.

" _Es zittern die morschen Knochen,  
Der Welt vor dem großen Krieg,  
Wir haben den Schrecken gebrochen,  
Für uns war's ein großer Sieg_." he croons, voice tight and low with emotion. He licks his lips. "This is a song of pride and conquest. I remember hearing this when I was a  _bubi_ ; my fa used to play it all the time." He wraps his fingers around his Sam's; brushes his thumb against Sam's knuckle as he stares into the distance. "It was a simpler time—a  _better_  time. With your aid, we'll be there again."

When an old white guy talks about a "simpler time" nothing good ever comes from it.

 _Especially_ not for him.

The ground vibrates violently. The room delves in darkness. Sam's eyes quickly adjust to the loss of light— _that's_  new—and his vision cuts right through the gloom. The music distorts into an unsettling warble as it slows to a stop, leaving the area void of any sound other than an acoustic  _clunk-clunk-clunk_ resonating throughout the facility. The fetor of fear and dread curls around Sam and plugs his nostrils.

There's a mechanical click, a pop, and just like that, the only exit in the room swings wide open. Sam stares bewildered into the hallway for a guard who may have opened it, but there's none.

_"КОД ЖЕЛТЫЙ: УРОВЕНЬ 1 МОЩНОСТЬ ВОЛНА. CODE YELLOW: LEVEL 1 POWER SURGE. КОД ЖЕЛТЫЙ: УРОВЕНЬ 1 МОЩНОСТЬ ВОЛНА. CODE YELLOW: LEVEL 1 POWER SURGE."_

Yellow lights flare to life. A deafening siren wails like a banshee in the night.

" _This is Johnson radioing in Aust. The fucking power cell short-circuited again! Is the Asset with you?!"_

"Yes, it's with me. How many sectors are out of commission?" he fishes a portable two-way radio from his pants, and with a gesture, commands Sam to his feet. Aust grabs his elbow like he's a fucking child at an amusement park and tows him out the open door.

 _"Gimme' a sec."_  Johnson pauses and presses a few loud keys.  _"Three, all intra-facility. The Aquatic Room and Electro-Dome are sustaining off the backup cell, but your floor is completely shut-down. You need to transfer the Asset to the Isolation Chamber before shit flies south, got it?"_

"What about the Containment Level?" Dr. Aust's hand trembles as they speed down the hallways, now flooded with sentinels and fright and fear. Sam wills a spell of dizziness away.

 _"Manual Lock has been initiated; we're sending in a squadron right now to secure the floor, God bless their fuckin' hearts. I'm not picking up on any activity down there, but it's only a matter of time 'fore the noise freaks'em out and they go_ ballistic _."_

This would be the optimal time to break for it, if Sam wasn't as perceptive as he is.

The facility is in an uproar. The young guards' inexperience is glaring as they ineptly mill around, panicked and chaotic like a hive of angry hornets. Several doors down the corridor are wide open—God knows how many other escape routes have suddenly become accessible in the surge. Aside from the sickly yellow strobe, the entire floor is encompassed in black. Not the perfect guise, but with his newfound speed and dexterity, he can manage.

However, the timing isn't right. Sam isn't the one to wait for the universe to align before taking action, but the odds are still deeply tipped against him. Only three of however-the-fuck many floors are out of commission. Every elevator he rode thus far is accessed with blood-recognition, and he sure as hell isn't listed as the few authorized to operate it. Despite the sentinels' incompetence, he's disproportionately outnumbered—one winged anathema versus an entire horde of trigger-happy kids with assault rifles.

If this was an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, maybe it'd work.

 _"We need to move the date of the convention."_  Johnson hisses from the other side of the walkie-talkie, obviously stressed _. "I don't know how much longer we can keep this up."_

Sam is ushered into a room similar to the very first one he resided in; hefty vault door, concrete walls, bare design. From there, his wings are restrained by a cumbersome brace, locking them uselessly together. A steel collar is fastened around his neck, then connected by four taut chains fixed to the ground. By the time the guards finish securing him, he's weighed down, cheek against the uneven floor. His muscles scream and burnunder the strain. Super strength be damned, it  _hurts_.

He's left in silence with the low drone of the alarm system behind the wall.

[и с х о д]

Sam notices the outages occur with higher frequency. None of them are worse than a Level 1 surge, but all alarming in their own right. Each time, he waits patiently to be guided to the Isolation Room. He watches and learns the patterns. He's silent and passive, but every time he commits the procedure to memory, he's a step closer.

[и с х о д]

" _Mama! Auntie Shirley brought a thing of chitlins again."_

_There's a loud crash, maybe the sound of spoon falling to the floor, from the kitchen._

_"The hell she didn't! Didn't I tell her she can leave that devilry in the south where it belongs?"_

_Sam snorts into his cup of beer. Sarah just outright cackles like the shit-stirring hellion she is. A chorus of groans and laments rise from all over the living room; his sister's laughter only strengthens._

_Everyone knows how Shirley and Darlene butt heads at family gatherings. Last New Year's, they fought over who made the best sweet potato pie. During Easter, they got into it again about who was the best dressed for the Pastor Daniel's Sunday service. Fourth of July, they both brought macaroni and barbecue ribs, and anyone who ate from the other was therefore "_ picking a side and waging war _." Auntie Shirley's words, not his._

_So one could assume Thanksgiving with the Wilsons is…interesting, to say the very least._

_Shirley waddles through the door, arms loaded with warm tin-foil pans. Sam abandons his drink at the table and takes the load from her, pressing a kiss to her soft cheek in greeting. He places the items in the kitchen and makes a valiant effort to ignore the glower his mother sends him. His aunt follows him into the small space, a few feet away from where his mother stirs a pot of rice and red beans._

" _Darlene."_

"Shirley _."_

 _Sam takes his cue and leaves hastily. He outright_  refuses _to get caught between either of them in catfight; they may be up in their age, but that means jack shit when years of pettiness and resentment fuels them. He grabs his beer from the dinner table, finishes it off, and then plucks the half-full bottle from his sister's hand._

"Hey _—"_

"' _Hey'_  nothing _. This is compensation for starting round one before Ma even finished the rice." If it turns out mushy, he's blaming her. She just shrugs, suddenly a little somber._

" _Uncle James is here you know," she says after a moment. Sam deflates as he takes a seat, less enthusiastic about his drink._

" _Yeah, I know. 'Saw him walk in here earlier."_

_It's also pretty hard to miss the man who hates everything he does; from Sam's profession down to the way he wears his socks._

_He supposes after this long, he should be used to James viewing him as the ignominy of the Wilson name, but it's easier said than done. It started when he was sixteen—the age of self-esteem issues and introspection and realizing he wasn't_  nearly  _as straight as he initially thought he was. His mother and sister accepted his bisexuality easily enough—even though he had to put up with Sarah's corny ass threesome jokes for a following six months—and that had been the end of it. Or so he thought, until got his first boyfriend and all hell broke loose._

_In a way, he sort of understands his mother's hostility towards Shirley. After all, she's the one who kicked off the Great Gay Fiasco of '94, running her mouth to every Wilson with a set of working ears. Word got to him and from there, anything Sam does is scrutinized by James._

"Why would the Air Force want someone like you?"

"Who's this Riley guy? Is he a queer, too?"

"Seriously, a shrink at the VA? Why don't you be a man and get a real job?"

 _James isn't even the only one who_   _thinks like this. The others are just tacit. When he turned seventeen, he was sent a bible for Christmas with verses about homosexuality bookmarked. Another time, he was handed a pamphlet to a youth conversion camp. Even now, whenever he's asked about settling down, it's always with a "young lady."_

 _His family never accepted him; they've become jaded. It's like an irrefutable fact; the grass is green, the sky is blue and Darlene's son likes to take dick up his ass. Nonetheless, he hears their unspoken antipathy when James goes on diatribes about how_  unnatural  _he is, and his relatives collectively remain silent. He rather they just call him a faggot to his face, so when he finally says_   _"fuck you"_   _to all of them, he's justified._

_James peels himself off the couch and out the house, a pack of cigarettes in hand. Sarah immediately pops up from her seat and snatches the last slice of pie from the serving tray._

" _Didn't James already call dibs on that?" Sam asks, excited curiosity bubbling in his stomach._

" _Damn right. Quick—help me eat this before he gets back."_

[и с х о д]

Sam rushes back to consciousness once the door reopens. He blinks blearily as the cell is swarmed by guards. Within seven minutes, he's released from the restraints, sans the collar and wing brace. They look like a shadow slinking down the white hallways. It's deathly quiet and stagnant, a stark contrast from the roaring commotion during the power surge. It's rattling how everything resets here. As if any plight that befalls this facility is immaterial and this all a part of cosmic order he is powerless to change and he'll be here  _forever_ and—

He obviously needs less time to think.

He reaches the communal shower. He's handed a bar of soap and allotted a surprising fifteen minutes to clean himself. When he's finished, they sit him down on a chair in a stall and plug a razor into an outlet. A guard clumsily runs the razor of his head and jaw, obviously unused to the thick, coarse texture. One scoffs indignantly when the weak razor catches on tangled clump. It isn't his fault he doesn't have thin ass string cheese hair.

Oddly, they don't give him his usual white pants and shirt combo, or the medical gown. Instead, they dress him in something completely different. It's fitted perfectly for his body, special made to accommodate his wings.

The get-up is disgustingly showy, despite only being black and silver. The tactical gear is impractical with all of its shiny buttons and silver-thread linings; essentially a glorified vest with no weapons. He runs his fingers along the skintight sleeves underneath—it's nylon, a material far too weak for battle. All the padding hides his thin shape and emphasizes his muscled arms and lean legs. That stupid skull-squid is stitched to the shoulder of his right arm. He crams his foot in a pair of hard, high boots that glisten under the overhead lights; shoves his fingers in leathery gloves. The menacing garb is topped off by a hard muzzle. Sam's throat tightens.

He's locked in a dense metal box with small air holes dotting the upper half. The chains on his collar are fastened to each corner of the box with no slack. The door locks, and the militia of guards wheel the box forward and onto the elevator. They go up, then  _sideways_  and realizes that this hellhole is a lot more complex than he imagined.

He arrives to an unreasonably wide and empty room, if the sound of footsteps echoing and bouncing off the walls mean anything. The area is encompassed in darkness, and aside from a few muffled whispers, it's silent. He shifts uneasily in the dark confinement, focusing his senses for any abrupt sounds or movements.

A light dimly brightens a wall. He, for once, is glad that he's a stretchy, bendy abomination and contorts his body in a way he can see through the breathing holes. His scope is tiny, but he can still make out the projection well enough. An aged anthem plays from the speakers, the amalgam of trumpets, war drums and chanting cacophonous to his sensitive ears.

" _Es zittern die morschen Knochen,_  
Der Welt vor dem großen Krieg,  
Wir haben den Schrecken gebrochen,  
Für uns war's ein großer Sieg."

The screen crackles to life; the footage is hoary and old. It begins with a fuzzy clip of soldiers marching in neat rows. A slow shot of a group of stone-faced, armed fighters. Another of dated tanks trudging between rowdy throngs of people. A devastated city burning to the ground. A mound of mangled corpses, the buzz of flies crisp past the horrible audio. Then there's a flash of a man with speaking passionately to a mass of people followed by a glimpse of a flag that itches the corners of his mind. The static in his head upswings, vision clouding as a remembrance phases through the fog.

Hitler. Swastika. The Holocaust.

" _Wir werden weiter marschieren_  
Wenn alles in Scherben fällt,  
Denn heute erhört uns Deutschland  
Und morgen die ganze Welt."

God fucking damn it.

When he thinks,  _I've already been disemboweled and experimented on, how much worse can life get?_ life—that vitriolic  _bitch_ —answers,  _well, you could've been disemboweled and experimented on by Nazis,_  and it was so. He briefly wonders how could forget something like that, but realizes it's probably the same reason he forgot his name and fundamentally his entire life.

The slides accelerate, showing frames of history at a seizure-inducing pace. Bits of speeches lasting no more than half-a-second. The progression from grayscale to Technicolor. Just an unintelligible blur until the screen stops at a silent video of a man decked out in a suit similar to his, bound to a chair with an excessive amount of headgear. His stare is vacant and dead—distressingly reminiscent of Dr. Aust's daughter.

" _Первый актив, Зимний Солдат, был самым успешным в нашей попытке воссоздатьЭрскинформула."_ An automated voice narrates.

The reel continues—a bombing in a city, a fiery building, a gruesome amount of forensic photos of suited men with headshot wounds—until there's shaky image of aircraft plummeting into a vast river. Sam's breath grows short; he keeps staring at the clip of the aircraft sinking. He draws blanks over and  _over_  but he  _knows_  this is important to him. Somehow.

" _Активы умер в нижней части Потомака в то время как реки ее миссия убийство мишень Капитан Америка. Мы не смогли восстановить его тело. Скорее всего, она была сломлена после первого взрыва."_

The screen goes black for a second, then hums to life again. "ПЕРВЫЙ ЭТАП" it reads, with the smaller subtitle "STAGE ONE" underneath in blocky text. There's a clip of a group of people—37, he instantly counts—lined up against a wall, their heights marked above their heads. People of all ages and races, all sodden-faced and at varying stages of wounded. With a start, he recognizes himself amongst the row of prisoners.

Sam blinks hard, then—

_The fetor of death is distinct. It's impermeable and sour, characterized by either pus, putrid flesh or spilled bowels dependent on which stage you happens to chance it. Add a horde of horse flies, maggots and rats fat with the entrails of people you've hesitantly considered a friend, and the fetor of death becomes less of a smell than an experience._

_He's pressed skin-to-skin with a dozen people in a cell meant for four, maybe five. The heat and lack of space makes his skin simmer, slicked with sweat and whatever bodily fluid secretes off of the ailing man beside him. The darkness is punctuated with moans and caterwauls and sobbing, but it all ends in silence. It all ends with a fume plugging his lungs and another gooey cadaver in the corner of the cell. The same corner everyone unanimously decided is the "bathroom," but_   _God he really doesn't want to think about that. Not now, not ever._

_A door in the center of the black room grinds, then slides apart. A stripe of white punctures the darkness; everyone reels like its unholy, seeking solace in the back of the containment._

_The darkness is bad, but the light is even worse._

_Last time there was light, the chamber suffused with the acrid scent of boiling flesh. Before that, they came to cram more people into this cell to suffer, as if their proximity and insanitation hasn't been the cause of an illness that killed the youngest demographic. Who knows whatever lies in their arsenal this round._

_A cart wheels into the room, its squeaky wheels a sharp whine amongst the hushed whimpering. The tray atop of it is loaded with various colored needles. A man donned in medical gear tightens his latex gloves, then preps a needle. The guard behind him unfolds a sheet of paper, a list, from his pocket, then reads a number out loud._ His  _number._

—blinks again, realizing that suddenly, the video presentation is over and he might've blacked out sometime during it. Sam tries not to jump when his door swings open and the lights flick on, washing the room in blinding white. He's quickly unfastened from the box, then lead out by the chains of the collar.

The room is as empty as he predicted. It's shaped like a pentagon, five towering walls enclosing him. He squints at the walls, quickly realizing they're made out of some thick, one-way glass that even  _he_ has difficulty seeing through; he can scarcely pick up the impressions of motion. An overheard speaker cracks before Johnson's voice trills through it, high and annoying.

" _And finally, ladies and gents, we have our main event! The most prosperous of 40 subjects with various genetic and health backgrounds, injected with a variety of DNA-transmutes. It remained a constant success during stages 1 through 6 and responded best to the unrefined dosages of Diazebital and Adcilin Alglucofinil, making it optimal for bio-tech and nuero-tech engineering. I present to you, subject 00804330, War Angel!"_

Behind him, the screen flashes "УГОЛ ВОЙНЫ." He faintly hears an applause from beyond the wall. A 3D model of the wings take over the projection, rotating and zooming in to specific areas as Johnson expounds their functions.

" _Subject 00804330 was created with cutting-edge technology, advanced coding and programming, and thanks to our newfangled international partnerships, Vibranium._

" _The wings are crafted from flexible, yet durable Vibranium alloys, treated to absorb kinetic-energy. The 'feathers' are composed of high efficiency solar cell plates, allowing the wings to preserve as much energy as possible in between tri-monthly charges. Along with a slender wing shape optimal for high-speed takeoff and aeronautics, high efficiency electric micro-turbine air impellers permits subject to reach a minimum of 321kph during flight."_

Johnson then describes the functions of the wings in detail, and Sam only half follows the technobabble. He feels like a new car at a show while a cluster of faceless onlookers ogle his new features.

" _Subject 00804330 is the peak of human agility and flexibility. Thanks to Dr. Dolph Aust's preliminary surgery, its internal structure has been upgraded, some key highlights being the incredibly efficient respiratory and circulatory systems. In addition, DNA-transmute supplements from Dr. Katerina Petrov and her team has strengthened subject's immune system, making it impervious to all but a select few illnesses. Which, by the way, is very beneficial for oncoming bio-chem warfare."_ Johnson clears his throat.  _"Now that's done, any questions?"_

There's a loud buzz followed by the crackle of a mic. "How will this… _Asset_  benefit me or my country in the slightest? The last time I've backed one of Hydra's play toys, it became an utter waste of money at the bottom of the Potomac. I refuse to waste it again."

Johnson—ever the man-child—sucks in air, a petulant whine away from throwing a hissy fit. " _Subject 00804330_ isn't _like its predecessor. For starters, it's not functioning off of crude 1940s tech and piss-poor coding."_  he exhales noisily.  _"This subject is the face of Hydra's global revision. It's the embodiment of_ conquest _in every sense. Having it on your side once war begins is not only a showcase of status, but immunity. You stand with us, and rest assured, your country will be protected underneath the Axis. You stand against us and—well, you've seen what our subjects can do."_

There's a pregnant silence before the buzzer rings again, a different voice floating through the speakers.

"You sound very confident about this revolution, Johnson, considering the last attempt was a failure. Hydra was dismantled by a man with a shield, a traitorous spy and the  _very_  subject you claim is on your side today within a week. I hope you understand our hesitance to donate even a pound to the cause, seeing the chances of it backfiring seem  _unreasonably_  high."

" _Be hesitant as long as you'd like,_ PrimeMinister _,"_  Johnson sneers.  _"Funded or not, GENESIS_ will _continue as scheduled. The point of this convention is not only for the betterment of both Hydra and its possible allies, but also serves as a warning. Whether you choose to heed it is your choice, but when it rains fire and brimstone at your doorstep, you_ will _remember this squandered opportunity."_

From there, the convention is a chorus of buzzes and questions, all at ranging levels of vilification or fearful praise. Sam listens carefully, storing every piece of information he deems exploitable. However, as time drags on—one hour, two hours,  _three—_ all he's left with is a jumble of oddments he can't even  _begin_  conjoin. The only things he gathers and comprehends instantly is his staggering lack of time; out of thirteen stages, he's on nine.

By the third hour, whatever forbearance Johnson held depletes. He's hissing and spitting at the naysayers, snarling at those who find fault with Hydra's proposal. As the convention dwindles to its last minutes, a number—a  _price_ —displays on the screen, carrying more zeros than any price should.

"Don't you think that's a bit  _absurd_?" a man gripes through the intercom. "The other subjects you've shown tonight were  _much_ cheaper, and their practicality exceeds—"

" _Oh for the love of fuck, how many times must I explain this? Subject 00804330 isn't the 'others.' It's not the goddamn Winter Soldier—who, if mentioned again by any of you, will be the cause of your untimely departure—or_ whatever _. It's the_ dreadnought _! The paragon of human engineered evolution! So_ yes,  _it's going to be pricey to purchase the best cognitive weapon in existence_!" he slams his fists and sharp feedback resounds.  _"Convention fucking adjourned, all of you go home!"_

[и с х о д]

Sam Wilson's Comprehensive List of  _Extremely_  Shitty Facts:

  1. The world's leaders are bumping elbows with tentacle Nazis.
  2. He's just been to his first auction  _(and apparently he's the fucking prize.)_



[и с х о д]

_"There's no point in getting a dog professionally trained; it takes out all the joy of having a pet."_

_"Alright, with that in mind, Cap'n left a little 'joy' behind the door. Might wanna' get on that before he spreads a little happiness in the kitchen, too."_

[и с х о д]

Sam's daydream isn't violent for once. It's… _soft_. He would almost think it's a memory due to the uncharacteristic lack of runny innards and the indistinct, airy quality; however, he knows outside of an occasional fact, his retention is done for.

He dreams of a house. Likely not his house, probably one he's seen off a holiday commercial or postcard, all rustic and cozy. It smells of cinnamon spice and scented wax candles. Cold, but the area fills a warmth that comfortably swathes him. Someone is there along with him. A lover, he thinks. Their presence is comprised of radiance and solace. Their words feel like home and their kisses like safety. They touch him like he's the most delicate thing in the world: reverent and slow and so,  _so soft_.

But then he wakes up and remembers he's been turned into a weapon and with the way he looks now— _hideous, scarred, inhuman_ —nobody will ever touch him again.

[и с х о д]

Dr. Petrov gradually decides to expand her vocabulary. By now, she has the whole thesaurus of slurs written and is probably coming up with more.

[и с х о д]

Ever since the convention, Sam's spent every waking moment decoding the vague, cryptic scheme Johnson alluded to. Whatever it is, he knows it's gonna' be big. Some apocalyptic, doom-laden ploy that knocks the world off its feet irrevocably. And apparently, he's found a nifty spot smack-dab on the frontlines of a looming storm.

" _Because you need us. Just as much as we need you."_

Was this the plan all along—the memory wipes, the serum, the  _wings_? Was he supposed to be the catalyst to regress the world seventy years? A byproduct of Dr. Aust's depraved notion of perfection? To replace their last Asset? All _three_?

He clenches his fists to stop them from trembling. He's never been more horrified. Not even during his internal reconstruction surgery, or when he was put in hydrogenic stasis for who knows how fucking long. Because through all those trials, he still managed to be him,  _Sam Wilson_ , in the end. But he knows when they finally reach Stage Thirteen, there isn't going to be a goddamn thing left.

The room swiftly plunges into darkness. He squeezes his eyes shut, then reopens them once his vision adjusts to the gloom. By now, after countless short-circuits and mini-outages, he isn't startled. It's a defining feature of the facility, up there with the winding white halls and weapon bearing children. However, the clunking reverberating underneath him is  _deep_. So deep when he splays his fingers against the floor, he feels the level beneath him, then the one beneath  _that_ juddering also.

The vents cease to blow air and the room quickly grows stifling. A bout of claustrophobia pricks his skin with sweat as he remembers just how far underground he is. Sam furrows his eyebrows, breath bated and jaw locked. The exit door slides open, revealing a bare corridor swallowed by an all-consuming darkness.

He rises from the ground and cautiously slips towards the door, poking his head through the frame and into the hallways. He checks either side with trained eyes. Nobody. Even the troops regularly patrolling his room are nowhere to be found. He egresses like a fawn taking its first steps; shaky and hesitant. Sam wavers before walking fully into the hallway, as if he expects some godly fist to smite him for his actions. He has the slightest idea where he's going, but he travels briskly in any direction that's away from the room filled with reflections of a man he hardly recognizes.

_"КОД ЖЕЛТЫЙ: ПОЛНЫЙ ЗАВОД СКАЧОК НАПРЯЖЕНИЯ. CODE YELLOW: FULL FACILITY POWER SURGE."_

_"КОД ЗЕЛЕНЫЙ: ВЕНТС ЗАКРЫТО; УРОВЕНЬ КИСЛОРОДА 67%. CODE GREEN: VENTS CLOSED; OXYGEN LEVEL 67%."_

" _КОД ЧЕРНЫЙ: ЗАПАСНОЙ ЭЛЕКТРОГЕНЕРАТОРКЛЕТКА ПЕРЕГРЕВАНИЕ. CODE BLACK: EMERGENCY POWER CELL OVERHEATING."_

The voices overlap each other, barely comprehensible between the harsh, computerized mix of Russian and English. Sirens blare to life, an explosion of sounds from all directions. The facility becomes a light show. Sam's heart whirrs in his chest, his veins filling with ice. He's fantasized about this. He's hungered and ached and waited—God, how he's  _waited_ — for the right moment, and finally, here it is—neatly wrapped in a package with a bow tied on top.

He's escaping.

He picks up the speed, bare feet gliding down the hallways with almost childish, delighted glee. Air huffs through his mouth. Adrenaline electrifies each sense, sharp despite the downers saturating his system. He feels  _alive_. He knows he's far from safe, but this is it. This is  _it_. The opportunity. The opening. The _breakout_.

He focuses his ears to detect subtle sounds under the layers of jarring noises. Heavy footsteps trod against the tiles—a fleet of maybe eight or nine soldiers—as they round the left corner. He has approximately twenty seconds before they cross paths.

He automatically swings into fight or flight. However, fighting isn't an option— _kids_ , he reminds himself—and he considers taking off, but decides to play his cards smart. He quickly folds his wings to  _standby mode_ , forcing himself to appear a lot less wound up than he actually is. After all, the last person who made it this far was "terminated."

As expected, the fleet of soldiers surround him, guns cocked and ready to go. Dr. Aust pushes past the group, irately knocking the closest sentinel's gun down. The guards unsurely lower their weapons; not holstered, but enough to grant him a second to respond before gunfire. Aust's so cocksure he has Sam wrapped around his finger; like Sam's his favorite docile Negro or an obedient dog—either way, it makes him sick.

"The Asset is secured," he tells Johnson, whose currently blowing a fuse over the walkie-talkie. "I'm bringing it to the Isolation Chamber."

" _Thank fucking fuck! Get it over there now. I'm trying to bring the main cell back online and we don't need any more fucking distractions."_

Dr. Aust moves to grab him, just as Sam counted on. Sam catches his hand, and in a swift motion, whirls him around. One arm braced around Aust's neck while he twists his arm behind his back. Dr. Aust lets out a surprised yelp. The soldiers raise their guns again.

"Солдаты! Не стреляй!" he hisses.

The guards share wide-eyed, bewildered glances as if they didn't understand the command. They don't lower their weapons. Sam's arm tightens over Aust's throat. The standoff is almost suspended in space-time; this three-way intersection mute and static while the world bleeds red and black around them. The radio blasts Johnson's confused voice from the spot where it was dropped. Sam crushes it underneath his heel.

"Drop your guns, all of you!" Sam barks. Hopefully, he sounds daunting, because he's trembling and anxious and won't do a single goddamned thing if they  _don't_. They shift and look around, muddled. " _Now_!" Sam hisses, increasing the pressure over Aust's trachea.

"Брось пистолет, солдат!  _Сделай_  это!" the man chokes out, face ruddy. Immediately, the soldiers drop their weapons and kick them over, hands up. They take a careful step back. Sam warily stoops low and grabs an M16, making sure to dismantle the others.

"If any of you even  _think_  about following me, he's  _dead_." He darts away, hauling Dr. Aust behind him like his life depends on it. Which, in case anyone forgot, it  _does_. He rounds turns and dashes across straights, going wherever his feet carry him. He needs to put distance between him and the soldiers before backup floods the hallways.

"Show me where the elevator is." Sam hisses once they're far away from the patrol. Dr. Aust is in shock, eyes blown open and movements jerky, but he stumbles ahead of Sam and leads the way. Sam keeps the gun trained against his back in case he tries to pull anything.

Sam may not kill children, but he has no problems plugging a cap in the head of a Nazi.

Sam's breath grows shorter and shorter. Not breathless enough to hinder his stride, but definitely enough to understand the oxygen is depleting  _fast_. The halls mist with a noxious gas that thickens each passing second. They arrive at the elevator entrance. Sam points at the blood-recognition pad with the gun. Apparently, that's the last straw because Dr. Aust spins around and faces him, fueled with anger

"How  _dare_  you defy me, subject?" he spits, stepping forward with each venomous word. "I  _made_  you what you are today! I nurtured you,  _cared_  for you, sought to make you perfect and this is how you repay me? You are  _nothing_  without—"

"Man, shut the  _fuck_  up."

Dr. Aust's face contorts with rage, face hot and flushed, teeth bared in animalistic ire. A very deep-rooted part of Sam is trained to be afraid of Dr. Aust—a man who isn't even a portion of Sam's physical prowess—and it makes him  _angry_.

"Do you think you knew torment before? You will know  _Hell_. You will beg for death when I'm done with you, Asset! You will  _suffer_ ; you will  _obey_!"

He really, quite  _literally_  doesn't have time for this. Sam lunges forward and seizes Dr. Aust's wrist, pulling him nearer by his outstretched arm. His eyes are wide with betrayal and astonishment and Sam almost feels sorry for what he's about to do.

Almost.

(Actually, no. Not at all, because Dr. Aust is the human manifestation of a dried cum stain and he couldn't spare any sympathy even if he has some.)

There's a blinding flash of metal. Blood spurts across the floor and splatters his clothes in red. Dr. Aust claws at the nub where his hand used to be—the same one that  _violated_  and  _molested_ and  _bastardized_ him—and a forlorn, strangled cry tears through his throat. His eyes flutter, then roll back and he collapses with a  _thud_. Not dead, but in shock. However, it's only a matter of time before he bleeds out or the gasses suffocate him.

The euphoria that zips through him is sick. He loves it.

The hallway is a dizzying chasm of  _black then red_ ,  _black then red_. The alarms blare in his ears, a demonic screech paired with a dead, automated voice.

_"КОД КРАСНЫЙ: ПРЕДМЕТ 00804330 БЕЖАЛ ФИЗИЧЕСКАЯ ФИТНЕС-ЗАЛ. CODE RED: SUBJECT 00804330 HAS ESCAPED THE PHYSICAL TRAINING ROOM."_

With his wings slicked in blood, an M16 slung across his torso, and a disembodied hand in clutched in his fingers, he thinks the name War Angel is very fitting.

— _tick-tick-tick-tick-tick—_

He presses Dr. Aust's thumb to the pad, and the light shines green. The elevator doors part sluggishly. He squeezes into the barely functioning shaft. All the lights are cut and it stinks of exhaust and petrol. It must be operating off of the dwindling power cell.

" _Доктор Dolph Aust прибыл на валу. Административный контроль активируется. Выберите действие."_

Hoping that Johnson had some input in the communications system, he says, "English." The automated voice takes a second, then next thing he knows, the voice is speaking perfect Microsoft Sam English. A slot opens on the wall, the same one Dr. Aust used, and displays a map. Sam absorbs the complex infrastructure with perceptive eyes. He trails a finger up the blueprint until it stops at the uppermost level.

_Top Floor._

He can escape. He can leave. The exit is right  _there_ ; all he has to say is a command and he's out the entrance he came from. With his artificial memory, he can navigate the taiga. He can endure the icy winds and unforgiving terrain. His daydreams can finally materialize; covered in blood drying out in the warm rays of the sun, far away from this hell. But he remembers that there are others. The last time someone tried to escape, they immediately launched Stage Seven—Lord knows what they'll do to those people if he actually egresses. He wants to rid himself of his moral righteousness and be selfish, but this is not  _him_. This is not something Sam Wilson would do; save his own ass and leave everyone else to rot.

"Take me to the Containment Level."

[и с х о д]

The Containment Level is the deepest floor in the entire facility. The exact opposite of where Sam wants to be, but he tries not to think about that once he leaves the elevator.

It's blistering hot down here, obviously right above the overheating power cell. Like every other level, it's shadowy and powerless. Even with his newfound scotopic vision, he can hardly see; the gas he detected earlier pervades the room in an opaque fog.

He cautiously stalks forward, hand wrapped around the M16. He took inventory in the elevator and is only left with a whopping nine bullets in the clip. In his haste to leave the standoff, he forgot to grab ammo from the other guns.

There are dead bodies sprawled about, all at different stages of putrefied, brutalized and… _eaten_? Some are fresh, obviously the soldiers sent from the last surge. Others look like they've been festering for months, all yellow and ripe with an assortment of mold clinging to septic wounds. On his expedition into the abyss, he passes a carcass propped against the wall. The lower half of the body is nowhere to be seen, the face is malformed, but he recognizes the remains of Caterpillar Face's fuzzy upper lip.

God, this is what Dr. Aust did to him for being  _late_.

He walks to the center of the room, glancing up once he distinguishes the faint sound of movement. There, several metal boxes are suspended in air, held up by a series of thick cables and pulleys.

"I'm gonna' get you guys out, okay?" Sam whispers in he hopes is a confident, pacifying voice. "Everything's gonna' be alright. Just hang in there for me."

He wanders blindly around the area before bumping into what he assumes is the control panel. A pad rests next to it. He presses Aust's hand on the surface. Soon, a very dimly lit screen flickers to life. It's a diagram of the boxes, an eight-digit serial code underneath each one. Sam swallows and presses a button he supposes is "release." With a mechanic hiss, the crates listlessly lower.

Sam's face is alight with relief. Already, he's plotting how to fit everyone into the elevator and get them out in whatever poor stage of health they're in. Maneuvering a group of likely starved and traumatized people through dense woods will be difficult. The harsh, icy territory is going to be onerous undoubtedly, but he'll make it work somehow. He always does.

The cell doors open. His face falls. It's then, in this horror-stricken nonplus, does he understand the panic to keep the Containment Level locked.

" _ROOaa **AAAAA**_!"

He enfolds himself in his wings, just in time to avoid getting a hole punched through his chest. However, even with the kinetic-absorbing alloy, he's sent headlong off his feet and—of  _course_ —into the rest of Caterpillar Face's festering corpse.

 _God_.

His mind brims with confusion and a pain that rips him apart more than anything Dr. Aust or Johnson has ever done to him. He just stands there, face twisted with anguish so potent he feels it  _physically_. His heart sinks, chest burning, each overwrought inhale like fire in his lungs.

They're all monsters. Everyone in the Containment Level is an outrageously mutated, mutilated atrocity, subsisting off the failed prototype of whatever shit they gave  _him_.

The hulking fiend charges at Sam again, enormous feet making the ground quake harder than it already is. It barrels through the bumbling mass of medical horrors. Those who don't scramble fast are enough flattened underneath its feet. Sam dips and evades the blow, but the beast spins and catches his outstretched wing by the base. It lifts Sam up as if he's  _nothing_  and  _launches_  him across the room. Sam smashes into the control panel, completely destroying it. Sparks burst around him.

The upheaval causes a few of the lost, drifting abominations to scream and panic, fleshy, deformed bodies jerking and stamping, using what little cognitive function they have left to flee to the safety of their cells. However, all of them aren't as fearful. Others sightlessly snap their head towards him, sniffing and huffing like beasts, tasting his blood in the air. He clambers to his feet, heart thundering in his chest.

Sam glances upward, spotting a face almost floating in the fog, glassy eyes fixated on him. But then he squints and realizes it's connected to a grotesquely stretched body and it's stalking  _towards_ him—

_Motherfucking fuck._

He swings at Sam with arms that end in hard, thickset spears, fingers melded into a single point. Sam sprints in the opposite direction because  _fuck that_ , but the thing moves faster than it has any right to, each swipe falling closer. It reels its arm back and snaps it forward. Sam abruptly hits the floor, glancing up to see a gaping puncture in the  _solid metal_ wall. He lets out a panicked grunt before scurrying off.

Really, Sam's doing the best he can without attacking. Maybe he doesn't have to worry about hurting them after all, because they are taking turns wiping the floor with his ass. This isn't the coordinated hand-to-hand combat he's used to. This is feverish brawling and swinging body parts that are more excrescences than they are limbs.

He's the  _dreadnought_ —the best weapon in Hydra's arsenal; faster, stronger and more lethal than every predecessor in creation. These are just the botched trials that were stored away at the very bottom of the facility, never to see the light of day again. He can fight them— _kill_ them if he wants to.

However, that's just it. He  _doesn't_  want to kill them, or even fight them. These were once people. People that he at one point knew, and suffered together with. People he, as a self-proclaimed "good guy," should've  _saved_. He should've protected them; should've gotten here faster. While he was above being coddled and spoon fed, they were decaying, transmuting into  _this_.

As capable and attuned his body is, he's only able to perform as well as his mind allows him. And now, his mind is distracted and conflicted— _vulnerable_. So when the brute charges him again, he responds a second too late. Pain explodes in his sensitive abdomen, and only by the grace of God, his torso doesn't rip apart by the stitches holding it together. He gasps, an arm curling over his stomach. But he doesn't have  _time_ to wallow in pain. He needs to go  _now_.

But then there's a sudden weight on his back, gray, veiny fingers finding purchase around his neck as a creature  _bites_ into the meat of his trapezius. Its razor sharp teeth and impossibly wide jaw are fastened to his fucking shoulder. It shakes its head side-to-side like a rabid hound, fully intending to tear the muscle away from his the rest of his body. Fully intending to devour him the same way as it's devoured the dismembered carcasses lying around.

His scream fills the room, agony whiting out his thoughts until he's only running off reflexes, adrenaline and whatever he was programmed with. Mechanically, he flexes his fingers.

 _Combat mode_.

Its head lobs off, caught by the force of his primaries shooting out. Sam shakes and the rest of the body tumbles over his shoulder. He grimaces, eyeing at the mangle of flesh and bone. He stares at the body for a half a second, lifeless and still. But then the headless creature almost  _resurrects_ , erratically rising back onto its feet. It takes a blind step closer, nearly slipping on its own blood, but corrects itself and remains upright.

They've created something that withstands death.

— _tick-tick-tick-tick—_

Sam, repulsed and nauseous, turns heel and races, rushing through the fog like a bullet. He hurdles over moldering soldiers, shoves past beasts and brutes—just keeps running until he's in the elevator.

 _C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!_ He slams down on the close button, watching frantically as the headless body somehow tracks him through the fog, ashen skin rippling as it storms in his direction. The door shuts right before it could reach in.

Sam slumps against the elevator, exhausted. The power goes completely, the shaft nothing but a shadowy box. For a minute, he's trapped in this hell, listening to moaning and screeching and fists beating on the layers of steel between him and what he could've been.

But like clockwork, everything resets.

With a jarring hum, the lights flash back on, full power. The sounds of gears grinding, no longer lifeless from the surge, sounds as this entire facility is revitalized with electricity again. He wants to sob, but he's so tired. So, so  _tired_.

" _Elevator 3 travel overruled. Administrative Redirection activated."_

He grips the empty gun. Holds the barrel to the soft underside of his chin. All he has to do is  _squeeze_ , and it would be all over. The thought momentarily pacifies him as he closes his eyes and swallows. He won't have to be tired anymore. He won't have to Subject 00804330 or War Angel or  _anything_ , anymore.

But he remembers the abomination that couldn't die. Trapped forever in that form, unable to process anything outside of the basest instincts. Feeding off the remains of other humans like a vulture. He despondently lets the gun fall from his limp fingers.

His fight isn't over. It will  _never_ be over.

The elevator comes to a stop. His eyes cloud with unshed tears. The doors open and a militia of guards wait for him, rifles and scopes aimed at him. His skin is dotted with red from the lasers. A few hovering over his heart, even more between his eyes. Dr. Bauer, surprisingly, stands at the head of the pack, face looking like she's feigning to have her turn fucking with his already dwindling mental stability.

"Толстые, раздражает и вводит в заблуждение. Неожиданный, но интересно." she smiles. It's snakelike. "I can't wait to see your inevitable crumble."

[и с х о д]

_Out of all the unrewarding locations he's traveled to, Sam's 100% sure this one is a bust. Yet, he finds himself outside a shadowy, dilapidated shack tucked away several miles into a Guatemalan jungle. He's allowed to be bitter and despondent about this trip, considering how poor the predecessors were._

_Guatemala City: he and Steve arrive at a vacant, run down motel room with absolutely no sign of the Winter Soldier. No witness reports or security camera footage, not even a fingerprint._

_Quetzaltenango: deep in the outskirts of the city was a Hydra base that was never fully constructed or utilized, likely abandoned several years ago. Still, they checked it out with high hopes and left with absolutely nothing._

_Puerto Barrios: they were supplied with a whopping three different sighting locations there. Natasha picked up a few blurry street camera pictures of a man skulking around with a metal arm. However, when they arrived at each site, he was long gone._

_If this guy hadn't kicked his ass twice before, Sam would've placed the Winter Soldier right next to Big Foot on his list of shit that doesn't exist. But here he is, like a foolhardy cryptozoologist, standing alone in the middle of a jungle at midnight. The temperature is oppressively hot. He's coated in sweat and swellings. If he doesn't die from the case of malaria he undoubtedly contracted, he can at least count on an unforeseen boa constrictor to finish the job._

_He supposes that he should've brought Steve along, but this is something Natasha thought he ought to do alone, considering she only texted this address to Sam. He doesn't want to think about what that meant, or question the validity of the past coordinates she gave them both. Not right now._

_He wearily exhales and tiptoes up the rickety steps. When he gets to the door, he considers knocking, but quickly brushes the stupid thought away. He easily busts the door open and draws his gun._

_He scans the gloomy house for any signs of movement. He glances at the threadbare mattress on the ground, then the dirty floors and walls with peeling, rotted paint. There's a fan running, and a bulk of laptops and cheap phones scattered around the area. Foreign candy wrappers lay in a heap beside the mattress. A stupid amount of guns, ammo and an assortment of projectile weapons crowd the corners of the room, excluding the two M4s he has for easy-access beside the bed. When he concludes there's no one there, he checks the bathroom, then the backdoor. All places turn up empty._

_But the Winter Soldier was definitely here._

_He considers calling Steve, but holds it off, just in case. Just in case of what, he doesn't know, but keeps his burner in his back pocket._

_Sam cautiously takes a seat on the grimy mattress, beside the cluster of old laptops. He flips them open and waits as the computer slowly come to life. Each screen is a cluster-fuck of open tabs, strategically sized so they all fit at once. A series grim-faced mugshots with files of credentials take up an entire monitor. On a different laptop, the windows are comprised of nightmare fuel forensic photos; many looking like they could've been committed by Patrick Bateman or, fuck, Hannibal Lecter. With a frown, he closes that laptop._

_There's a few digital copies of the documents disclosed after the fall of S.H.E.I.L.D. Some random articles he can't find any relation: a jailbreak somewhere in Frankfurt, Germany; a series of foreclosed orphanages springing up in eastern Russia; speculation about panic in Wakanda. Sam sifts through the content, but considers them useless anyway._

_He moves to leave the mattress when his foot bumps into an object on the floor._   _Another laptop he realizes with exasperation, but bends and grabs it regardless. This one is far newer and high-tech than the rest; hell, he would think Stark designed it if it wasn't for the typical Hydra flourish on the lid. Sam pops it open. The screen is flooded with windows, just like the others. This time, however, the tabs are a concoction of motion and numbers, likely in the process of hacking. He stares bewildered at the laptop—not even_  daring _to touch it, because for all he knows about the binary code, he'll accidentally make the machine detonate—until a loading bar appears and it's quickly overrun by a file._

_FACILITY #30266 PROGRESS REPORT: 11.6.14_

_PROJECT K-003 SERAPH BETA: TERMINATED_

_PROJECT K-704 CONQUEST BETA: TERMINATED_

_PROJECT X-550 ARCHANGEL ALPHA: TERMINATED_

_PROJECT Z-120 WAR ANGEL: PENDING__

_Next thing he knows, he's flying across the room at the speed of light. Pain explodes in his back, but he barely has time register before he's narrowly dodging a metal fist barreling towards his face. Sam clenches his fist, and with cold dread, curls his fingers on air._  Damnit.  _He scrambles to his feet, but is immediately knocked on his ass; the wind effectively punched right out his chest. He's hauled up by the neck of his shirt, then slammed against the wall like he weighs nothing. He heaves and sputters, suddenly trapped between 200-pounds of muscles and killer instinct._

_Well shit._

_He searches Bucky's eyes, looking for this supposed "compassion" and "humor" Steve always told him about. His head is still attached to his body—_ fornow _—so that's something. However, he's pretty sure the blade grazing his jugular negates that._

 _If Sam doesn't know any better, he'd say he looks…_ scared _. Scared of_  what _? But then he thinks about Steve and his dopey smile and all of his stories about Bucky he's pretty sure don't apply anymore. Or the witch trial that'll inevitably occur with everyone itching to persecute him for crimes he was forced to commit. Or becoming a hyper-visible media scapegoat after decades of being nothing but a rumor. Oh._

_Bucky flexes his arm and Sam takes that as a moment to start talking before he gets his esophagus punched through his neck._

_"I won't tell." He breathes in a rush. Bucky squints at him, almost catlike, with his head cocked to the side as if his words are foreign. "I won't tell Steve. That you're here."_  That I've found you.  _Because looking at the flash of relief in Bucky's troubled eyes, he realizes that Bucky nor Steve are ready to deal with the ramifications of being near each other again. He sizes Sam up one last time before backing away. He hastily packs his things, throwing laptops and guns into bags and slinging them over his shoulder._

_Pity coils in his stomach, along with grief and that need to heal others when he isn't even finished healing himself. He chokes it down as Bucky walks to the exit. Hesitates. Opens his mouth a fraction before snapping it shut and slamming the door behind him._

_Hydra stripped so much of James Buchanan Barnes away, he's nothing but a body surviving off of vengeance and bootlegged super soldier serum. Sam once told Steve he doesn't think Bucky is worth saving. Now, he doesn't know if he even_ can _be_.

[e x o d u s]

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look y'all, i'm a horror whore. even though this story isn't 100% horror, ya girl can't help but add in some of my favorite horror tropes and elements. if you are uneasy, you are definitely not gonna want to stick around for the next chapter! very heavy on the body horror and the other tags i have listed! note the rating also! it won't be like this for very long, but until then!!!  
> side note: this chapter took forever to get out, but tbf, it's like 13k words  
> side side note: the flowers have meanings  
> -tla


	4. dichotomy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Warning tags are spoilers, so read end notes for reader discretion.]

**iv**

**дихотомия**

[d i c h o t o m y]

 _In the normative sense, “morality” refers to a code of conduct that would be accepted by anyone who meets certain intellectual and volitional conditions, almost always including the condition of being rational._ That same morality code is commonly used to gauge who is a “good guy” and who’s not. But being a “good guy” is such an arbitrary measuring stick. It’s used to rationalize and obscure—it’s a label that’s easily applied to just about anyone, all dependent on _who_ uses it. What _defines_ goodness? Honesty? Integrity? Compassion? _Conformity_?

Regardless, in this facility with child soldiers and cannibalistic mutants, there is no such thing as a “good guy.” There’s only _him_ and _them_ —whatever befalls during those interactions are either necessary or cruel.

The cell Sam resides in is strange; an empty, glass tank with a sickly green tint. It’s oppressively small and square, shoved into one of those concrete vault rooms he first slept in. He hasn’t the slightest idea what floor he’s on, or his relation to anything anymore. The outages seemed to have stopped, considering the number of brownouts slimmed to zero.

That about sums up the information he could gather while completely drugged out his _fucking_ mind.

God, he didn’t realize how lucky he was before. Now, IVs prick seemingly every accessible vein like sprawling plastic tentacles. His senses—usually so sensitive and hyper aware—are deadened. He can’t _feel_ , he can’t _see_ , but could _narrowly_ hear past the obtrusive white noise in his head. Just enough to catch personnel murmuring amongst themselves as they study him. The faint scratch of pencils across papers. The click of combat boots across the tile. And most recently, the string of Russian playing over and _over_ through the intercom like a broken track record. (It quickly joins the soundtrack of his suffering; inarticulate lyrics to the symphony of whirs and ticks his body composes.)

He can’t recall how long ago he attempted his escape. His mind says it was mere hours ago—that he went pitifully, broken-willed and placated with enough tranquilizers to kill an elephant—while his body belies that it was much longer, considering the gruesome shoulder wound is mostly mended, nothing left but shallow indents in his skin and a deep-seated ache.

He doesn’t know which to believe.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

_Sam relaxes against the wooden rocking chair, a beer in hand as he watches Sarah’s kids run around in frenzied circles—a game of tag that strays too close to the street, but luckily, there're not any cars around. He’s shacked up with his sister in Chincoteague, Virginia, though only for the weekend. It’s a needed respite from musty underground bunkers and the omnipresent heat of Central America._

_He’s only been here for a couple hours, yet he’s already diving into some post-op emotional slump. And it’s not due to fatigue or PTSD or anything remotely reasonable—it’s envy. Ole’ green-eyed envy, settling underneath his skin, sinking into his bones and souring his tongue like rancid milk._

_Because no matter how many accolades he can accumulate as a soldier, American hero or even an Avenger, he will never obtain_ this.

 _Sarah has a job as an EMT at the local hospital. A charming husband whose smile could probably white-out the stars. Two kind—albeit mischievous and borderline spoiled—kids and a two-story house with a lavish, green lawn and a white picket fence. A_ picket fence _!_

 _He tries—and fails so,_ so _horribly—to ignore the dull ache that subsides in his chest once he realizes the gaping chasm between him and_ this _. Normalcy. Avenging reinstated him with a purpose after Afghanistan and he’s grateful for it, but God, he misses this. He misses domesticity and a stable schedule. He wants to wake up in the morning without fear that some new Big Bad is going to tear a hole through the city. He wants to drowsily make sugary coffee and pancakes and share languid kisses as the sun breaks. He wants something to take care of—not necessarily kids, since he’s nowhere near ready for that, but a fish, or fuck it, maybe a pet rock._

 _He’s been craving home more than ever, but unwittingly signed off all of that at the first_ “on your left.”

_“I can hear you thinking.”_

_“Yeah, well I bet you can; your nosy ass could hear anything from a mile away.” He mutters into his beer, taking a long sip. Sarah snorts and punches his shoulder._

_“Fuck off, I’m tryna’ be a good sister.” Her smile diminishes, but her mien relaxes into something more earnest. “No, but seriously, what’s buggin’ you, man?”_

_It’s easy to pour his heart out to Sarah. Despite her rough-around-the-edges, take-no-prisoners demeanor, she’s a trustworthy confidant with dark, watchful eyes and open ears. Sam starts off small, giving her minimal details about his back-to-back ops since the Winter Soldier first reared his head in early spring. He carefully omits that he actually_ found _Bucky, instead emphasizing the utter futility of this search. How this hunt sapped every ounce energy from him—how he’s_ tired.

_(He doesn’t think he’s ever been this tired, at least not in a long time. This is an exhaustion that no amount of sleep can remedy. An exhaustion that bleeds the pneuma and vitality from a man who's literally been compared to the sun, until he’s dim and bleak in both character and appearance.)_

_She takes a long moment, sips her beer and stares off into the distance, a pensive expression on her face. The silence is interrupted by Jody and Aubrey squealing in the distance._

_“Fuck Captain America,” she says suddenly and Sam sputters. “Like honestly, fuck that guy. You’ve given up enough for him. You’ve let him drag you along—“_

_“I didn’t let him do_ anything _,” he says with a bite. He’s sick of the narrative that he doesn’t have the brain will to think for himself; that if Steve says jump he’ll ask how high._

 _“Sure, you might’ve willingly joined this goose chase for some dumbass reason, but God Sam, from the shit you’re telling me, this is beyond your pay grade. You’re not his emotional punching bag, you’re not his therapist and you’re sure as shit not his fucking sidekick. You are not_ obligated _to stick around; not when it’s costing you like this.”_

 _“I’m_ fine _, Sarah. I just need…a break or something. Like two weeks off in Jamaica, y’know?” His humor does nothing to appease her._

_“Stop lying.”_

_“I’m not. It’s not that seri—“_

_“Don’t bullshit me like I don’t_ know _you, Sam!” she slams her bottle against the armrest. The clank resonates through the neighborhood._

 _“Well, what the fuck do you want me to_ do _?! I can’t—I can’t just_ leave _him, Sarah, he_ needs _me. I_ can’t _…”_

 _“_ You _can’t? What about_ me _, Sam? What about Mama? What about Uncle Leroy and Auntie Shirley and all’a’dem? Do you think I’m fucking stupid or something like I don’t what this shit is doing to you? It’s gonna be like Riley all over again—I-I can_ see _it happening in slow motion already. I’m not ready to lose you for real this time, Sam,” she swallows thickly.  “And you know what? If Rogers can’t see this, fuck_ that _and fuck_ him _, too.”_

_Sam stews over her words, eyebrows pulled together. Involuntarily, he reflects on the times Steve abused their friendship unawares. The times he mistook Sam as a permanent fixture in his life that will stand beside him invariably and unconditionally. The (countless) times he lumped their ambitions into the same category as if Sam doesn’t exist outside of Steve. And it’s not like Steve doesn’t care or that he does it on purpose—Sam knows he does with his tender looks and caring words—but the path to hell is paved with good intentions._

_“He needs me,” he offers weakly, looking down at his bare feet._

_“Maybe,” she mutters dispassionately. “But you_ need _to take care of yourself. I couldn’t do anything the first time, but I’ll be damned if I let this shit happen again.”_

[Д и х о т о м и я]

Ironically, it’s when he’s shackled, drugged and delirious that Sam’s taught how to fly.

Sam smells the man before he sees or hears him—the distinctive combination of too much antiseptic and the permeating scent of blood. A scent belonging to every clinician in this facility. It takes a couple tries to rouse him from his sedative-induced stupor, but he gradually comes to. He blinks to clear the fuzz from his eyes, then another once his eyes adjust to the poor lighting.

He doesn’t recognize the doctor. He’s twiggy and pale with a full beard, beady black eyes that the personnel here can’t seem to be hired without. He doesn’t introduce his name or anything; he just idles up the glass wall and untucks a piece of paper from his coat pocket.

His English is barely understandable, but after being surrounded by incomprehensible Russian for long, he can follow well enough. The instructions are complicated: how to activate the “ _micro-turbine air impellers”_ , how to adjust the speed of the boosters, how to perform “nautical take-off without any disposable platforms”—shit that already doesn’t make sense when Johnsons says it and makes less sense _now_. Unfortunately, Sam doesn’t get to ask any questions, because as soon as he finishes, he tucks the paper away and vanishes. The info-dump is a disjointed jumble in his mind.

It occurs to Sam how belated these flying “lessons” are. With the wings and the physical training, flight was a given, but also a function he didn’t know how to use beforehand. This is a crude way to teach him how to fly, considering how deliberate and thorough PT was. He imagines his failed escape cut the teachings short, and the rest of his training was just fed to him once. And why now? Why _now_ teach him flight when he’s trapped in this _stupid fucking box_ for the foreseeable future?

It doesn’t make any sense. _Nothing_ does.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

Worse than anything is the wait for his punishment. It’s the hush and doldrums and constantly being on edge. It’s not being able to sleep in fear that when he wakes again, he’ll be missing both legs and a couple of teeth. It’s the fear that when Dr. Bauer finally walks through the door, she’ll put him back in hydrogenic stasis for _good_. (— _down, down, down until he can’t see light from the surface anymore and he can’t breathe and he can’t_ —)

He’d prefer it if Dr. Bauer would just outright kill him. If she could, that is.

He hates it because he can’t gauge her nature. Dr. Aust and Johnson were easy enough to read; one a depraved misanthropist, and the other a run-of-the-mill piece of shit with too much tech at his disposal. However, Dr. Bauer was exempt from most of the process thus far. Now she pops in randomly at intervals he can’t predict. Sometimes he won’t see her for seemingly “days.” Other times, she’s a thin shadow haunting his peripheral. What’s her style? Is she a slow, silent killer? Brash and violent? A meticulous executioner who’ll draw out every painful interaction?

(There can’t be many ways to punish something specifically designed to be indestructible, he imagines. He’s immune to severe weather, noxious gasses and heals faster than anything he’s ever witnessed, but that doesn’t mean he’s impervious to torture.)

He is a non-expendable asset—he knows that with blinding clarity. The amount of money poured into this operation tells so. The contrast between him and the forsaken mutants in the Containment Level highlights his standing. In the very least, he won't die. At most, he'll be a brainwashed assassin driven by whichever orders a group of warmongering Nazis feed him.

Right.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

_15 – 12 = 3 + 24 = 27 / 9 = 3(1 – 14) = -39_

Out of all the unhealthy coping mechanisms he’s picked up from being in this hellhole for too long, he thinks this is the least unhealthy. Between vomiting and increasing degrees of self-harm to dredge himself out of panic attacks and stave off disassociation, counting really isn’t that bad.

_48 / 6 = 8 – 75 = -67_

Sam becomes obsessed with numbers; just basic algebra algorithms he can do in his head easily. It's so much easier to deal with them than real life. He likes their predictability. No matter what, 1+1 will always equal 2. 2 times 2 will always equal 4. 360 divided by 12 has yet to be anything other than 30. Yet, when Dr. Bauer, clandestine and deadly, treads in the room, he doesn't have a clue what will happen next.

 [Д и х о т о м и я]

“From now on, you will _earn_ your food.”

Dr. Bauer stands in front of his cell with her sharp attire, hawkish nose, and emotionless eyes; a coat of lipstick makes her lips shine like fresh blood. She sports a pair of black slacks and white blouse, salt-and-pepper hair wrapped in a loose bun. She’s about as dressed up as a Nazi could bother to be. Something’s happening. (Something’s always happening.)

Sam slowly blinks, too drained to form a response.

“Luxuries such as bathrooms, showers and so on will be allotted only if your performance is up to par. Nothing will be given away anymore.”

Her words are vague and ominous, speaking of the grim morrow. Sam’s eyes narrow. How the hell was he supposed to earn _anything_ when he’s trapped in this repressive glass square? He waits for her to elaborate, gooseflesh coating his arms and legs, but she just looks him up and down before turning on her heel and exiting.

It takes five minutes before people enter the room again. A herd of soldiers—presumably the youngest in Hydra’s arsenal, ranging from fifteen to seventeen at most—flock the room. These soldiers, in all their soft-faced, wide-eyed youth, are obviously inept—more so than any others he’s seen thus far. They’re clumsy and frightened, lacking strength to actually do harm without their weapons, therefore negating their usefulness as “guards.” This is deliberate. His morality proves to be his weakness _again_ and now it’s being used against him intentionally.

 _Silent, but cruel_ , he decides.

The glass door splits down the middle like the Red Sea. The mass of IVs and other health monitoring equipment are removed hastily, then he’s taken by his chain lead and guided out the room. He doesn’t know where the hell he’s going. After the IVs were yanked out, his senses heightened fractionally, but he’s still stumbling around, barely cognizant of his surroundings. He doesn’t bother trying to pay attention.

They enter a familiar room. A few seconds later, Sam recognizes it as the one the convention was held. It’s still as empty and spacious as it was before with faint shadow people moving behind the walls. The projector is on, streaming live video footage of himself on a screen big enough for everyone to see; like a game of sports. On the opposite side of the room, there’s a metal box, similar to the one they put him in before. Without warning, he’s administered a shot. He doesn’t flinch since he’s learned that the pain of thick needles and whatever’s in them are the least of his problems.

It feels like the electricity turned on in his body. Fire and vigor course up his veins. Vision ultra-focused. Body attuned and sensitive. Every sense flares to life like a wildfire. His heart whines in his ears— _tick-tick-tick-tick—_ and his back muscles flex at the surge of strength. The sluggish dregs of his downers completely dissipate as some concentrated form of adrenaline flushes it out.

God, he feels so fucking _alive_.

The guards are gone by the time he slows his sensory feedback to something manageable. An overhead speaker cracks to life. Bauer’s thick accent echoes through the empty space.

_“Trial 1: Subject 00804330, War Angel, versus Subject 00537780. 15 minutes until the session is terminated.”_

_Versus?_ he thinks with increasing alarm. There’s a loud buzz, a subtle click of hydraulics and like that, the brace falls uselessly to the ground. In that same moment, the box at the opposite side of the room parts. The metal squeaks—nearly inaudible, but deafening in his ears—until the door swings halfway open.

 _Oh,_ fuck _me._

He’s given maybe ten—nine, eight, _seven_ —seconds of planning time before a decapitated mass of muscles charges him. Automatically, his wings curl around his form. His shoulder pulses, not from pain, but from the memory of nearly having his deltoid torn from his body. With a wild thrust, he flings it back, but only staves off the beast for a few seconds as it returns to its feet. Then it’s back again—seizing, grasping, thrashing its arms sporadically.

It swings. He ducks. It lunges. He side-steps. It leaps and clings to his neck, feet planted against his back and deformed fingers wrapped around his neck (as if to enact revenge and behead him as he did it). He bows over and throws his weight, hurling it to the floor. Hard.

There’s a streak of red on the stark, white tiles.

He, for the second time, is in a rut. Fighting something this uncoordinated is difficult, especially when he’s forced on defense for most of the skirmish. And yet again, he doesn’t know if he even _wants_ to get a hit in, the same nagging guilt from before eating him away.

It’s why he refused to kill anyone in the Containment Level the first time; in the nebulous, guilt-ridden corners of his mind, he knows they are his kin. They are same people who shared his anguish in the earlier stages. The same people who once laughed, smiled and wept, just as he does. The same people who were left to rot in cages suspended in air; the neglected, botched experiments of what he is now. And the hot, shameful feeling that this is his fault—that his ineptitude caused their suffering— _kills_ him. Apparently, he’s utterly incapable of saving anyone—even _himself_.

So all he does is block with light feet and fluttering motions; avian grace allowing him to _dodge and retreat_ , _dodge and retreat_ in an endless pattern. His movements are fluid, every step feeling as if it doesn’t quite touch the ground. One after the next, his wings and body are unified; stretching, flexing, and twisting in tandem, bound by a sole purpose.

After fifteen minutes of a playing tactical merry-go-round, one could imagine the “battle”—if it could even be called that—is a deadlock. The creature lacks the ability to process any other onslaught than charging, and he refuses to do anything than evade for as long as he can.

Now, he understands the glaring difference between a “weapon” and a “cognitive weapon.” His opponent is like a gun, useless unless someone picks it up and uses it. Except broken, so more like a gun that continuously fires rounds until there’s nothing left. He, on the other hand, is both the gun and the gunman. Able to shoot rounds like any weapon, but able to dictate when and where.

The battle is tipped drastically in his favor, but he takes the loss instead.

_“Trial 1 is suspended. Subject 00804330 failed to terminate subject 00537780 within time constraints.”_

The buzzer sounds again, and Sam lets out a swear. Guards flood from the doors with tranquilizer guns, because really, how else are they going to get the beast to calm down long enough to be stuffed back into a cage? It was already a marvel they managed to wrangle it from the horde dwelling in the Containment Level. He would like to be surprised with the guards turn the nozzle of their guns towards him, but he’s really not. Three tranquilizers pierce the back of his thigh in quick succession.

He guesses he isn’t eating today.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

His hallucinations are an endless, downwards spiral of chaos—which, easily, is an algorithm for his current state of life. It’s a combination of malnourishment, his impending psychosis, and the gradual acceptance that _yes, this is it for me._

He imagines his dosages Diazebital and Adcilin Alglucofinil were the faulty strains. That he’s a part of the hive of cannibalistic mutants, robbed of their humanity and their only respite— _death_.

He imagines that his weak, green reflection is an entirely different man—one with black eyes and deep taupe skin. Lurking in his box, mimicking his every move, slipping silently in and out of visibility like a phantom. A phantom, which in every delirium, grows a new ghastly feature to add to this lifeless bastardization of himself. Last time it was moldy skin. Another time it was missing eyes. Before that, the recurring imagery of sewn lips.

He imagines Dr. Aust coming into his cell, pushing him up the wall, hot breath against his neck, fingers coated in tacky blood. He leaves streaks of red on his skin—across his cheeks and eyelids and lips, bedaubing them in stains he can’t hope to wash away. His delusions are evocative, and coupled with his tactile memory, he sometimes thinks they’re real. The only way he knows it's _not_ is by the presence of Dr. Aust’s two fleshy hands.

And the fact that fucker is still alive.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

_“I mean, compared to some of the places we’ve been to, this really ain’t that bad.”_

_Sam wonders how America would feel to know their national icon is a fucking liar. Because this place really is_ that _bad. He regards the dingy motel with a look of disdain, lip curled in half-disgust, half-indignation._

_Sam really didn’t expect much quality from the slums of Soyapango, El Salvador, when they got the tip from Natasha on Barnes’s recent whereabouts. On top of that, he isn’t a picky guy about where he sleeps—his tours in Afghanistan surely taught him to appreciate the decent things in life—but this is a complete shithole. The motel’s structure is lopsided, nigh dilapidated. The carpets reek of piss and mildew; the plumbing a pipe short of nonexistent. They aren’t granted the luxury of air conditioning—which really sucks, considering Central America is a Hellmouth of heat and humidity—and Sam’s seen enough insects creeping around for him to take his chances sleeping in the shitty truck Steve insists is still fully functional._

_At least (he thinks) it has A/C._

_However, instead of complaining, Sam just clamps his mouth shut and shoots Steve a wry look. After all, this is the best they can do without Tony’s funding, seeing that he strongly opposes hunting the Winter Soldier after fighting tooth and nail to bury that case as far as it could legally go. So he sucks in a breath of stale air and tosses his duffle bag on the bed furthest from the door. He follows the bag and flops limbless on the cot, face buried in pillows that at least smell kind of clean. Shitty motel or not, a bed is a bed and he’s bone tired from driving several hours on dirt roads._

_Steve, heedless of Sam’s inner turmoil, seems pleased with himself. He sits on the edge of his mattress and unpacks the few belongings from his bag in silence. Sam just drifts on the line between conscious and slumber, listening to the reassuring sounds of Steve moving and breathing before finally slipping into a hazy slumber._

Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!

_Sam jerks awake, hand flying to the gun on the nightstand. He glances blearily around the dark room, blinking owlishly until he could detect the faint outlines of furniture in the gloom. The first thing he realizes is that Steve isn’t there, probably gone to do his neurotic two-mile radius reconnaissance, then relaxes a fraction. Moonlight sifts through the thin curtains, casting a dim blue glow across the carpet. A shadow—a man, he realizes after a second glimpse—flits across the curtain. Sam’s eyebrows furrow._

Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!

_The figure raps against the door again, and this time Sam slides off the bed and towards it, gun firmly in hand. He slinks up behind the door and peers through the peephole, only to be met with blackness. The son of a bitch has it covered. He cocks his gun—a standard pistol, not his first choice, but it’s easier to carry than an M4—and sucks in a breath of air, then quickly unlocks the door and swings it open. He aims the gun ahead, finger just teasing the trigger, when he blearily recognizes the man before him._

_“_ Barnes _?”_

 _Bucky’s time away from Hydra’s control has been…_ rough _, to say the very least. Illuminated by an unflattering florescent streetlight, he looks vagrant—all scruffy and dank with a stance that looks like he doesn’t quite know what to with his arms and legs. His hair is lifeless and oily, haphazardly tucked underneath a threadbare cap. He’s wearing far too many layers of jackets for the swathing humidity of Central America, even at the cusp of fall. Sam eyes him slowly, too nerve-wracked and weary for social decorum._

 _"You're here." he says, because he doesn't think "hey", "what's up" or "how you've been" are appropriate greetings—at least not for a guy like_ him _at a time like_ this _. Either way, Bucky doesn't grace Sam with an answer; instead, he just shifts his feet and continues his thousand-yard stare into nihility._

_He’s a long way from Guatemala._

_Bucky shoves his hands into his pocket—Sam tenses at the sudden movement—and fishes a baggie out of his pocket. Then he sticks his arm out and just_ drops _it, and Sam lurches forward to grab to right before it hits the ground._ _Asshole_.

 _"What's this?" It's a pointless question, really, since Sam already knows what_ it _is—a burner phone; an outdated driver that looks like it’s been around since the early 2000s. What he actually wants to ask is_ why? Why are you here? Why now? Why _me_?

_"Intel. From Hydra." It's the first time he really hears Bucky speak. He doesn't know what to expect. Something along the lines of Darth Vader’s tenor—baritone and daunting, sounding everything like a guy who’d punt him off the edge of a skyscraper. Rather, his voice is weak and raspy, a whispery quality that gets lost in the wind. Sam bites his lip, waiting for Bucky to elaborate. He doesn't._

_"Uh, thanks. I guess."_

_Bucky nods, stands there for a beat too long, then stalks in the opposite direction, slipping away as quickly as he came. Sam lingers for a full minute, dumbfounded. He rubs his finger along the phone, finding the letter ‘S’ scratched into the bottom of the phone. Maybe it stood for ‘Sam.’ Maybe it was the first initial of a Hydra agent before he got the shit beat outta’ him by the Winter Soldier._

_Either way, he knows better than to let Steve see any of this._

_He eyes his monitor as the chip downloads onto his laptop, hoping it doesn’t do something absurd like catch on fire or install some kind of—fuck, he doesn’t know—Hydra tracking shit. Luckily, all it does is load at a sluggish pace. He sits at the edge of bed, eyes flicking from the door to screen, hoping Steve decides to stay out longer._

_It's coordinates to a Hydra base. Three, actually. Two in Central America, one in Chile, all located somewhere remote. There's an image file with an entire infiltration strategy drawn out in his sloppy, boxy handwriting, red arrows and scribbly red lines marking up the blueprint._

_Sam frowns. Bucky handled these missions perfectly fine by himself in the past, now he’s passing the torch to Sam. Is he asking for help? Is this a sign of faith? Is he just tired? He sends it to Natasha and decides to let her handle this. He knows that Natasha won't ask questions. She’ll be inquiring, and maybe she’ll eventually figure it out, but she won’t ask questions and won’t say a_ word _._

 [Д и х о т о м и я]

Trial two commences not too long after the first. He’s dragged out of his cell, led into the convention room and loaded with an especially potent batch of epinephrine. Cameras track his every movement like a vigilant eye, the screen displaying his rugged, roughened person against the leftmost wall. The buzzer sounds, the brace falls and his headless opponent chases him with a blind thirst for blood.

Sam follows his tactic of pussyfooting around the fight. He spots openings and weak spots easily but doesn’t take the initiative, instead prancing and flitting around the space like a canary. It swings, meaty fists aimed to bludgeon his skull in, but Sam restrains both of its hands high above their heads. The creature has brute strength—likely more brawn than him—but his wings, ever attuned, adjusts to imbalance and steadies his stance.

His eyes hone in on a distorted tattoo of a face and a quote on its bicep. Maybe a lover, mother or sister, by the saggy ring of flowers surrounding the image. Sam's stomach twists in knots. He falters and earns a blunt strike in the center of his chest for it.

He wonders, is she person looking for it? Does she worry? Does she care? He imagines that she thinks his opponent is lying at the bottom of a ditch somewhere. This is far worse.

Then, by some sadistic train of thought, he wonders if anybody is looking for _him_. If he has a family scrounging across the nation, looking for a Sam Wilson with dark skin, dark eyes, and gap teeth. The Sam Wilson who had a glossy red 1978 Electra-Glide Harley and listened to sensual, slow music he can no longer remember the words to. A voice asks him—an archfiend, cradling his face, lips brushing against the shell of his ear— _why would anyone be looking for you?_ And he swallows thickly, because he can’t come up with an answer.

He doesn't kill it again. Dr. Bauer doesn't feed him.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

_Barquisimeto, Venezuela is one of the lovelier sights in Latin America. Right now, standing in the bustling heart of the city, it’s almost as if this escapade is worth his time. The city is a lovely blend of antique and modern, the experience enriched by the novelty of Venezuelan culture and the colorfulness of the people. Stunning during the day, the town becomes an absolute spectacle underneath the stars. While being a resident in D.C. made him detest everything about tourists and “tourist culture”, he can’t help but wander the city and marvel at mundane sights, committing everything to memory._

_However, his exploration cuts short as the rendezvous time draws near. Sam hops out of a taxi, pays the cabbie, and waits in an unremarkable section of the city where the lights and stars don’t bother to shine. Of course, leave it to Bucky fucking Barnes to lead him to some shady alleyway._

_Barnes emerges from the shadows—Sam understands how he and Steve were once friends; they’re so_ dramatic _—and stands next Sam, both gloved hands shoved in his pockets. Wordlessly, Bucky pulls out a brown paper bag and drops it into his waiting palms. With Bucky’s scraggly appearance and Sam being—well,_ black _, it looks like a drug transaction, but no passersby bat an eye._

_“Where to this time?” Sam hums, needing to fill the silence. Usually, Bucky leaves promptly afterward, allowing no time for discussion. Most of their colluding are nonverbal, with Bucky either being mute in person or texting monosyllabic answers to the few questions Sam asks. However, he lingers today, staring emptily at the smoky night scene. Odd._

_“Puerto Cortés, Honduras.”_

_“Never been to Honduras.” He hasn’t been to a lot of places, but idle chatter is a place to start. He casts a sidelong glance at Bucky, observing his undernourished frame. Obviously, he’s packing more muscles than Sam can hope to get with his monthly gym subscription, but he’s a rail compared to his figure when he was the Winter Soldier. He can practically hear his mom’s voice in his ear:_ “Somebody put some meat on that boy’s bones!” _She was talking about him then, but…_

_“You wanna’ go grab something to eat? I’m starving and I bet there’s a decent restaurant ‘round here somewhere.”_

_This jostles Bucky out of his stupor. He searches Sam with pinched eyebrows and an unreadable countenance, stares long enough to make Sam uneasy_ (shit, fuck, did I say the wrong thing? Does he not eat food or something?) _before he gives a nod so quick Sam almost believes he made it up._

_“Alright, cool.” He hopes he sounds nonchalant because his heart is about to burst through his ribcage. God, why can’t he just be simple? Why can’t he just take the stupid fucking chip, accept the fact that he’s helping Bucky enough as it is, and be on his merry way? He quickly browses nearby restaurants on his phone, but once he figures all the reviews are in Spanish, he takes the search into his own hands. He strides ahead, walking maybe three blocks with Barnes trailing behind, then into the closest open restaurant._

_It’s a small mom-and-pop eatery with plain, ecru décor and dim lighting. He wasn’t actually hungry before, but his palate stirs at the scent of spices, beef and rice in the air. He wets his lip with his tongue, scanning the menu with new interest. After a minute, he orders_ corbullón de mero _in broken Spanish and Bucky just points at the_ pisca andina _from the menu._

_They sit in silence at the table, more occupied with their plates than with each other. Sam occasionally sneaks glances at Bucky as he eats, watching as he silently devours his meal, giant spoonful after giant spoonful. Bucky’s bowl was loaded with more food than his, but he finishes it in half the time it takes Sam to._

_“If you want to order more, that’s fine.”_ I’m using Steve’s card anyway, _he nearly adds but bites his tongue. Barnes doesn’t answer him with a yes or no. Instead, he curls his fingers around the edge of the table, opens his mouth and says:_

“I fuckin’ _hate_ carnie food.”

 _It takes Sam a moment. Actually no; it takes Sam_ several _moments, and Bucky even longer to shut his mouth after the fact. He makes an aggrieved expression, like he doesn't quite understand where the thought came from, then tenses like he's ready to leg it. Sam hurriedly swings into a tangent, picking up_

 _“Who’re you telling? Went to Coney Island when I was twelve and I tell you I never stepped foot there again._ _All of that shit tastes like bad oil and powdered sugar.” Bucky hasn’t bolted yet, but still looks like he might vomit_. Keep talking _, he concurs with himself. “Now me? I ain’t too much of a picky eater; I take what I can get, but I’m not subjecting myself to that level indigestion again. It’s a good thing I can cook all that carnival food at home, y’know, where it’s better and probably safer to eat. Better yet—cut the carnie food and just make some pancakes. You can’t go wrong with_ pancakes _, man.”_

_Sam describes his specialty to Bucky with rapt detail. His flapjacks are fluffy, warm and dense with crispy edges. He usually spreads whipped butter across the soft, doughy surface and tops it with homemade syrup and freshly chopped fruits. He depicts it so vividly, he physically sees Bucky reeling back to reality, mind focused on envisioning his cooking._

_"You gotta' try them. You're missing out, man. You should see how Steve gets when he—"_

Fuck _._

_Bucky doesn’t stick around this time. Sam sighs and slumps in his seat as Bucky flees, watching his back with tired, sad eyes._

 [Д и х о т о м и я]

It’s no shock that he’s sent back to the arena for trial three. Once again, he’s given fifteen minutes to “terminate” his opponent, and just like the last two times, he fails intentionally. This failure, however, doesn’t come without repercussions. He fractured his arm from his wrist down to his elbow, and he likely tore a muscle somewhere. It was an extremely clumsy ordeal, trying to utilize his wings for the first time. He attempted to string together the jumbled knowledge in his head in the heat of battle and foreseeably got information muddled.

He curled his fingers and the wings extracted to their full length. Easy. He activated the boosters, metal warming as it prepared for high-speed flight. Not as effortless, but doable. Then he took a leap into proverbial darkness and _immediately_ ate shit against the ceiling.

200 MPH is one hell of a speed.

And in every trial, Sam notices another minute detail about the mutant. He notices that it was castrated. He notices signs of cruel experimentation, several precise scars, burns, and lacerations pocking its gray flesh. He notices the violent line down the center of its chest from heart surgery, that it has the same shoe size as him, that its ring finger is the same height as its middle finger. By the end of the fight, he has a list of trivial features about the creature that he didn’t recognize before.

With each confrontation, he realizes with alarm, he draws connections between him and _it_. He can’t tell; is he humanizing his opponent or dehumanizing himself? Is he sympathizing or empathizing? Is this accidental, or is this yet another part of Hydra’s elaborate scheme to make him hate what— _who_ he is more than he already does?

Fuck if he knows.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

The words are a defining part of Sam’s captivity. Infallibly, all “day”, they play over and over. He doesn’t speak Russian—doesn’t understand a lick of it—but he could repeat these ten words with ease if he really wants.

(He really doesn’t want to.)

If it serves to annoy him to death, it’s doing a piss-poor job considering how easy it is to ignore the monotonous drivel. Hell, half the time he’s barely functional, let alone roused enough to be bothered by some words of all things. So as far he knows, it’s meaningless and ineffective. The intercom blares the phrases in static-heavy Russian for the umpteenth time, filling his box with noise. He almost doesn’t catch the beep and slide of the door opening past the drugs.

Dr. Bauer slithers up, a snake in her very essence with her reedy frame and authoritative stride. He grimaces when her shadow forms over his slouching figure. Instead of her usual pen, paper and fleet of scientists, she tows a lone cart into the room. The wheels squeak sharply; it rattles and quakes as she pushes it. The lights flick on, and despite being absurdly dim, it sheds the most light he’s seen in a while.

Rather than his usual “dinner”—which consists of needles and pills that taste like someone dragged their unwashed scrotum across his tongue—he spots a silver cloche atop of the cart. Steam emits from the lid, rising like rolling smoke.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize it’s food. Real, actual, _hot_ food.

Bauer removes the lid from the tray, and the smell instantly fills his box through its vents. The scent is nothing short of ambrosial. It’s a concoction of smoked red meat, rich herbs, and fresh vegetables; garlic. Thyme and a savory sauce a subtle underlying aroma. Even the tray is garnished with herb sprigs and thin fruit slices.

Sam's mouth waters. He feigns indifference, but he _craves_ sustenance. For an indefinite time, he’s gone without food, and even longer since whatever he forced down hasn’t ended up in a toilet. He can’t help the way his body comes alive at the prospect of a proper meal, heedless of the wary premonition ringing in his head.

Dr. Bauer crouches before his cell and lifts her chin at him; watches him squirm for a few long moments. Her expression is unreadable; her face lax with ennui while her eyes belie fascination. It makes his skin crawl. Then she speaks.

“Are you hungry?”

It’s such a stupid fucking question his face falls flat.

“Would you like to eat?” She gestures behind her to the cloche. Sam swallows, but opts silence; her lip quirks up. She rises to her feet, retrieves the dish, then places it on the floor next to the glass. He glances at it, then her.

“Are you hungry?” she repeats, a subtle, cloying change in her tone. His eyes narrow, but he remains silent. His pride and body wage war against each other. His pride tells him _never succumb; don’t bend at first sight of food_. However, he’s trembling and ill with malnourishment. He wants it— _needs_ it. If playing Dr. Bauer’s mind games is the price for provision, then…

“Very well.” she hums, turning her back to him and stalking towards the exit. She pauses by the threshold, flicks the light off and casts him in unremitting, _unforgiving_ darkness again. It’ll be just _him_ and his _strong_ sense of smell and food that will soon turn from delectable to _fetid_ and _moldy_.

“ _Wait_.” The word flies out of his mouth, desperate and breathy. Bauer looks over her shoulder, then fully turns around. Her eyes pierce his soul. She asks again in a higher, discordant tone, “Would you like to eat?”

Yes, he is hungry. Yes, he would like to eat.

He nods.

And she gives him what he wants.

As usual, he’s not given any utensils, but he doesn’t care. He hardly minds as he drops to his hands and knees, tearing at the meat with his bare fingers. He strips it apart. Bites it. Rips chunks of it away with his teeth in an all-consuming urgency to scarf it down. He barely tastes it how quick it goes from his mouth to his stomach. Sam snarls, snaps and huffs as he devours it, probably looking as feral as Hydra wants him to be.

He flips the meat to the uneaten side. It hits the floor with a meaty thud. He’s shaking—God, he’s _shaking._ His mouth parts in a silent wail. His stomach grows riotous. Dread wracks through him, feeling like he’s been doused in ice water.

"You're just like the rest of them," Bauer says, and her voice is no longer sugary and high, but dead and revolted. Then she just _leaves_ —as if she didn’t just turn his life over on its head. As if she didn’t just irrevocably _ruin_ him.

The half-eaten meat lies incriminatingly at his feet. Slightly gray meat with a distorted tattoo of a woman and a quote he now realizes says “ _i love you_.”

 [Д и х о т о м и я]

_“Christ, Sam, what the hell happened to you?”_

_(He took a pistol to the face, was grazed by a bullet and probably dislocated his left shoulder; Barnes is shit at a) working with others b) securing the rendezvous point.)_

_“Got into a fight with the staircase. Staircase won.”_

_(If a group of tailing Hydra agents counted as staircases, he wouldn’t exactly be lying.)_

_“Do you need to go to a hospital or something?”_

_(Yes.)_

_“Nah, I’m—ugh,_ shit _—I’m good. Just need to sit down, y’know? Old man bones.”_

_(Thirty-five really ain’t that fucking old.)_

 [Д и х о т о м и я]

He watches the opposite door with his jaw locked and heart whirring in the dawn of battle. He experimentally flexes his muscles; his wings and the brace grate uselessly against each other. Itchy tension builds between his shoulder blades.

The door on the opposite side parts open and a behemoth stomps through. This thing is all protuberant muscles and ruddy skin that looks like blood is welling right underneath the first layer of flesh. And Jesus shit, the _hands_. From the forearm down there’s nothing but cumbersome logs of muscle and bone— clubs more than anything. Its head is locked in a blocky metal box with vents, the equivalent to Sam’s wing brace. He squints at it.

It’s restrained by a collar, a series of leads and a fleet of burly guards hold it in place. He shuts his eyes an inhales. The stench of rot, old blood and pus stings his nose. Underneath that, he detects adrenaline running high amongst the wardens, though oddly more concentrated in one area than the others. he spots a child amidst the sea of soldiers. However, he’s so disconnected from the assemblage he’s not even holding a _gun_.

_“Trial 4: Subject 00804330, War Angel, versus Subject 00127850, Greed. 30 minutes until the session is terminated.”_

His brace falls off at the buzzer and his wings spring free. He shifts seamlessly to _combat mode._ Then the warden behind the child catches his eye. He unstraps his gun, cocks it and—

“ _Run_!”

_Bang!_

—shoots the kid right in the leg. The soldiers abandon their formation and flee to safety behind the double doors, leaving Sam, Greed and a wounded child trapped for thirty minutes.

A second buzzer goes off. Sam watches with dread as the box opens and hits the ground with a sharp crack. Its entire head is a fucking _mouth_. A wide, gaping maw with cyclic teeth like a lamprey—a human meat grinder. It pants loudly, a clamor reverberating in its chest like pots and pans clanging together.

Sam doesn’t waste another second getting to the child. Wind lashes past him as he swoops in, kneels and gathers the kid in his arms. Between the sudden motion and the blood seeping from the bullet wound, Greed grows interested. A long, fat tongue runs over its teeth, dripping salvia.

From there all hell breaks loose.

Fighting a ten-foot behemoth with a screaming child in his hold is less than ideal for battle. Even less fortunate when said child is pounding against Sam’s chest, squirming to get out of his hold. His foot flies up and kicks Sam directly in his chin, snapping his jaw shut on his tongue.

“For fuck’s sake kid,” he grits, folding himself in when Greed swipes his arm as if to knock his head off his shoulders. “I’m the only one here that’s not tryna’ fucking _eat_ you!”

(A distorted tattoo pops into the forefront of his mind. He forces it down.)

“Демон! _Демон_!” he screeches, face ruddy with tears. “Боже, помоги мне!”

Sam’s distraction costs him. He takes the brunt of the strike, gets thrown off his feet and slams _hard_ onto his shoulder. His arms fly open and the child scrambles out of his hold. He hobbles in the opposite direction, gripping his leg.

" _Hey_!" Sam yells after the child, racing to his feet.

Greed takes a lumbering step in the child's direction. A mammoth shadow engulfs his frame. Fuck.

There reaches a point in Sam's pacifism that he realizes that non-action isn’t an option anymore. His choices are clear: man or monster? As an abomination caught between both, he’s forced to pick a side. Guilt beleaguered him for so long— _these are your brethren! They were people!_ —but these aberrations lacked humanity for a long time now. They single-mindedly pursuit blood and flesh and the only way to satiate that hunger is through death.

He doesn't hold back again.

His wings whine, a sharp keen that grows higher and _higher_. Nothing but speed and sleek metal cutting the short distance like a bullet. He springs up, angles his body and _kicks_ the beast square in its chest. Bone cracks underneath his feet. Greed staggers, letting out an inhumane roar. That godforsaken mouth _moves_ and turns into a cyclone of teeth.

Jesus _shit_.

There’s a reckless edge in every confrontation, like he’s just _barely_ shirking mortality. Sam hits heavy; every slog carries incredible strength and marveling speed. He’s electric.  

And its not that he’s impervious to damage. ‘Cause he’s definitely not. He feels vulnerability in his ruptured spleen and broken shoulder. Fuck, he’s pretty sure his ribcage is smashed to bits and a bone is digging into his “air sac” (because apparently lungs are démodé, a thing of the past.) But the point is he doesn’t _care_. He can’t feel shit and his head is fuzzy and adrenaline is making him feel more alive in the face of death.

 _I can do this all day_ , he thinks, swallowing a mouthful of coppery spit. And at this rate, he _will_ be doing this all day. For as skilled as he is, Greed is twice as durable. For every gash, slice and bruise, Greed regains its footing _that_ much faster. He needs to get creative. Quick.

Greed’s mouth (if possible) widens, it’s neck folding to accommodate the change. It’s opening is large enough to swallow him whole, wings and all. Staring down the barrel, his vision focuses on the fleshy, soft esophagus beyond rows of teeth. Greed tramps forward. It dives at Sam mouth-first; fast, but slow enough for him to dodge out of the way.

He chooses not to.

Instead, as that bloody cavern descends upon him, he merely offers a limb. A Vibranium, kinetic-absorbing limb with hundreds of feathered metal plates, but he digresses. Greed, true to its name, consumes. Heedless of the rows of teeth jammed against Sam’s wing. It just devours and ingests like it was created to do, forcing him further into its gullet. He curls his fingers and—

_Shliiiing!_

His wings shoot to its greatest length, bursting right out the opposite side of Greed’s skull. Blood paints the wall. Greed's limp body sags against his outstretched wing in a sick slide. Sam retracts it until it curls against his side. Goliath collapses dead at the feet of David.

The gravity of killing something hits him. He expects guilt. Self-loathing par for the course. What he gets is a depraved, drunken euphoria. As if he imbibed on the world’s finest liquor and drank ‘til his stomach engorged with it. He doesn’t expect it to feel so fucking _good_. He doesn’t expect to want _more_.

( _More of what?_ his mind asks coyly, sounding oddly like Dr. Bauer.)

“ _Помогите_!” the child rasps, and Sam quickly snaps out of it. He hurries towards the child, nearly slipping. He kneels beside the child. He's covered in blood and flesh is caught between the feathered plates of metal. He looks rabid. The child tries to inch away, but he's feeble. Sam lets “instincts” from the other side of the static wall guide him.

“Just stay still for me, okay?” he coos in a hopefully soothing voice, running a comforting hand down the side of the child’s pale face. The boy likely doesn’t understand English, but at least he stops writhing.

He tears the child's black pants, freeing his distended right leg. He carefully soaks as much blood a he could with the ripped fabric. Finally, he’s can assess the wound. He wasn’t shot with a standard M14, instead some kind of shotgun; his thigh is mess of mangled flesh and shrapnel. Guessing by the excessive flow of blood, his femoral artery got clipped. Sam tears off his shirt and tears it into a strip of cloth. He forms a crude tourniquet and ties it around the soldier’s upper leg.

To stabilize a wound like this, he needs two large-bore IV cannulae, proper monitoring and at least six units of blood. Sam has _nothing_.

"He needs help!" Sam gathers the kid’s head in his lap. He's so pale he’s tinged blue. Lightning bolt veins run across his skin. "He's going to _die_!" he roars, but he knows how dispensable children are in this facility. Here, they're not people, but pawns in a game of chess. They exist to serve as examples. Sam coos and cards his fingers through the child’s hair, humming the jumbled tune he can hardly remember.

The trial doesn't end until he stops breathing.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

 _The grounds trembles beneath his feet. The black sky ignites in hot, yellow light, the remnants of a moderate-sized Hydra bunker consumed by the inferno. Even a good distance away, heat from the flare licks his skin, the fire a touch too bright for the gloomy copses. Fire dances in his eyes; soot congests his soul. Sam supposes he should be happy to witness another extension of Hydra come crashing down, but the experience is utterly…_ unsatisfying.

_Something isn’t right._

_And he’s never had a stronger portending in his entire life. It shakes him down to his core; he can feel it in the tips of his fingers, the soles of his feet. Sam tips his head towards the sky, watching a plume of smoke speed into the air as the last of the bunker’s infrastructure melts._

_Bucky has fed him these locations nonstop for weeks. It feels like a pointless chase—almost more pointless than the one Steve has him on—running around in circles. It’s grunt work; all things Barnes could do by himself with his metal arm tied behind his back, but it’s like he can’t be_ bothered _to. The Avengers taking the face of the incursions while Bucky hides in the shadows doing who-knows-fucking-what. The only success so far is that Steve’s_ briefly _stopped obsessing over Bucky’s whereabouts, but now he has an entirely new plight to harry him._

_Steve starts the car after they loaded and secured their weapons into the vehicle. They sit in silence while the car warms up to full functionality, tension tactile yet tacit between them. Steve has the steering wheel in a vice-hold. Sam doesn’t try to hide his post-op woe, looking sullen and grave in the passenger seat._

_But Steve won't ask if he's okay. Maybe it’s because, despite being bound at the hip, their communication sucks shit. Maybe it’s because he can’t handle any bad news to add to his pervasive stress. Maybe it’s because he’s afraid that one day Sam will say ‘no’ and they’ll have to uncover months of trauma and heartache and_ deal _with it._

_Of course not._

_Steve won’t ask and Sam doesn’t say anything._

[Д и х о т о м и я]

Because of his success in the arena, Dr. Bauer allow him small privileges. His wardens let him shower and marginally tend to his neglected hygiene. When he arrives back to his cell, it’s been cleared of everything that happens when a man isn’t permitted a bathroom or sink. Right in the middle of the floor, a steaming, silver cloche sits. It takes endless hours and the obtrusive fetor of rot for him to finally open it.

When he finds the child’s head on the platter, bile promptly surges up his throat.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

_It starts with a bottle of pills like it did before._

_They’re standard over-the-counter aspirins, just 325mg a pop. Tiny and white, maybe the size of his pinky nail. Easy to fit all in the palm of his hand; a bit harder to fit all in his mouth._

_Doesn’t stop Sam from thinking about it, though. Often._

_The first time the urge creeps on him, it’s late on an empty road in Puerto Cortés. The underground bunker was blown to smithereens after being checked thoroughly. Just like every other Hydra headquarter in Central America, it was barren and looking as if it’s been decommissioned for the last two decades. To add to their unlucky streak, the sad sack of shit Steve’s been calling a “truck” finally quit on them, sputtering and smoking its way out._

_So here they are, two exhausted soldiers trudging down an interstate at 3:16AM. The next town is an hour away and neither of them packed for more than a quick in-and-out mission. Morale is low. Sam’s patience is lower._

_He rifles through his knapsack for the emergency medical kit and fishes the aspirin out like it’s life or death. He shoves two in his mouth and forces it down. Considers the pain in his back, then takes another one. Pop a tablet for all of life’s vices, it feels like at this point; all the pain he can’t scrub away with a strong will and a nap. One for Hydra. One for Bucky’s apparent duplicity. Two for Steve unintentionally treating Sam like his emotional mule._

_Chalky residue sits on his tongue like ash. The bottle shakes in his hand._

_From there, it takes all of four days for him to realize he’s regressing. The first day, he sleeps in ‘til noon in the frowzy motel—which isn’t uncommon for his recent change of lifestyle, but he’s only awake long enough to take a piss before crashing again. The fast food Steve left for him goes bad._

_The second day, he’s up long enough to brush his teeth and shower, but he can’t stomach a meal. So he drinks a cup of brackish tap water since it’s something. He doesn’t know where Steve is. For once, he doesn’t care. Sam curls up on his bed, staring at the phone with an ‘S’ scratched into it until it (hopefully) spontaneously combusts._

_The third day is a déjà vu. From sunrise to sundown, he swears he’s reenacting the past like a belated Groundhog’s Day. He wakes to a sick stomach and groggy mind, then tries to sleep again only to rouse ten minutes later. He drifts around the room, tinkers with random objects and forces a smile whenever Steve’s around. Night falls and his imagination turns Kafkaesque. A silent urge nags him every time his vision frequents the aspirins. Or the overturned opioids on the dresser. Or drastically, the mini-revolver peeking out of the duffle bag like a tantalizing slip of skin._

_His mouth is dry. He sips more briny water._

_(He wonders,_ is this what Sarah was talking about? _That he’s unconsciously ingrained that his needs are second to everything else? That treating himself like he’s expendable will catch up with him? That he will fall down_ that _pit again? Because the first time he fell down_ that _pit, he almost didn’t make it out. It’s started with a bottle of pills and it nearly it ended with it, too.)_

_By the fourth day, his body aches and he’s ill with pain. Steve’s still gone. It’s the perfect excuse to pick up some ibuprofen from a nearby convenient store. He at least has the common sense not to do that._

_But that silent urge is as slick as Satan with a voice sweeter than the whiskey he’s guzzling like water. He’s got Edwin Starr blaring off his phone, dancing to War two beats off. Hellfire burns chest, but he just spins and spins as tempo swings up for a different song._

_Sam knows how it goes from here; he’s studied this when he trained to become a counselor. Too much BAC can shutdown critical areas of the brain that control breathing, heart rate, and body temperature. Most times people don’t make it that far; they black out and drown in their vomit while they’re asleep. He’s lost people to alcoholism, both at the VA and in his family. Every funeral was heart wrenching._

_The Supremes start playing. His lifts his bottle and drinks, anyway._

_He’s surprised he even wakes up that night, or at all period. He’s lying in the bathtub with his shirt off. The whiskey bottle exploded on the floor. He doesn’t know what the fuck happened, but it’s probably better that he doesn’t remember._

_So when Steve comes back to the room, the first thing Sam tells him is: “We need to talk.”_

_Steve pulls off his cap and folds his sunglasses, eyebrows furrowed in confusion, but he takes a seat on the bed across from Sam. “I’m all ears.”_

_Sam doesn’t waste any time getting to it. “I can’t…I can’t do this anymore.”_

_“This?” Steve asks after a pause._

_“Yeah,_ this.”

_“You’ve gotta’ be clearer than that.”_

_“I think you know what I’m talking about, Steve.”_

_Avoidance, denial—just two of the many counterproductive coping mechanisms Steve’s picked up after losing everyone that matters to him. But this isn’t something they can sweep under the rug anymore; something burying themselves in missions and sleep can’t hide. Energy crackles hot and volatile between them—it’s like sin and absolution; regimen and an addiction; his demise and rebirth wrapped all into one person._

_It isn’t fair._

_“So you’re leaving.” he says instead of asks, an edge to his otherwise monotonous voice. His expression is indecipherable._

_“Yeah. I need to—”_ do it for myself for once; to relearn who I am without you. _“—take a break. For a while. ‘Gotta destress out in Jamaica somewhere, y’know? Drink a piña colada out on the beach.” The same joke doesn’t work twice. His smile falters._

_“Go.”_

_He’s blindsided by Steve’s response. More than half of a year of intimacy and camaraderie and that’s_ it _?_ Go _? No send off or questioning or_ anything _? Sam is stupefied, his unintelligent response, “Huh?” slipping involuntarily._

 _“Then_ leave _!”_

 _(Manic, wild and apoplectic—Sam wouldn’t have thought to use these words to describe him. After all, this is the same Steve who filled his hospital room with flora and professed that seeing Sam hurt pained_ him _. However, what else could be the outcome? When Steve literally gouged himself out to make space for Captain America?)_

_Just like that, Sam is gone._

[Д и х о т о м и я]

“Why did you let me die?”

Sam slowly peeks behind him, body stock still. The head is a festering display of wilted tomatoes and lettuce. Everything long turned brown, sodden and foul. The skin is thin and ruddy from extensive boiling, mouth parted in a perpetual silent scream. But he’s dead. Completely and absolutely dead; he held him as his body went cold. Sam turns back around and begins counting again.

_56 / 4 = 14 – 3 = 11(6 – 9) = -33 =_

“Why did you let me die?”

Sam glances over his shoulder again, skin prickling with gooseflesh. He stares at the empty eye sockets; the mildew along the top of his skull. He peers outside of his cell, searching for a speaker. There is none. He looks again, and it _moves_ , a slow roll of muscles too rankle to even function, but it _moves_.

“Why did you let me _die_?”

Sam scrambles into the corner of his cell, wings straining against the brace. The head shifts—turns to Sam with his eyeless gaze.

“Why did you _let_ me die?” it hisses with mounting rapidity and venom. More conviction and fury, his words sounding like fiery damnation—a hot crucifixion, pinning him to his spot. “Whydidyouletmedie? _Whydidyouletmedie? Whydidyouletmedie?”_

Sam curls in on himself and scoots into the furthest corner.

He knows he’s hallucinating, but that knowledge does fuck all for him. He tries to ground himself by pinching his arm. Nothing. Sam shakes and quivers, choking on his words and the scream that threatens to spill from his lips.

He grabs his pinky and with no ado, snaps it backward.

It’ll heal.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

“Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.”

Sam blinks slowly, huffing air from his nose. He started developing a tolerance to the last barbiturate, so his wardens switched the formula and upped the dosage. His vision is blurry and cross-eyed and like usual, his senses are muted. However, worst of all is the overwhelming dehydration. His tongue is sandpaper in his mouth, dry and heavy with a throat of cotton; his body a touch too feverish.

So it takes much longer to be alarmed when the familiar, uninflected tenor grates his ears. Sam rubs his eyes. It does little to clear the film. Sam’s eyes drift around the shadowy room for the voice’s source, but his scotopic vision is fickle. It dawns on him that he is blind, shackled and inert—impotent in every way he could possibly _be_. _Shit, shit, shit…_

“You have become a pitiful thing in my absence, subject.”

Light erupts, so blinding and white that water gathers at his bottom lids. There, a ghostlike silhouette stands at the door, arms splayed on either side in a grand entrance. A nimbus surrounds him like a malevolent specter. Sam’s heart drops down, down, _down_.

“You’re not real.”

“Am I not?”

(Yes.)

“No.”

 _You’re hallucinating_ , he tells himself as his chest heaves, the onset of a fit climbing. But then again, every hallucination he’s had thus far was just on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. Seeing himself lurking in the shadows? A head talking? All unsettling in a phantasmagoric way, but wholly impossible. This? _This_ is plausible—that maybe he _didn’t_ suffocate. Maybe he _didn’t_ bleed out in that hallway.

It could be real. But it feels fake.

(However, who is he to determine reality? He, who’s been besieged with mania, amnesia, and torment? He, who’s subject to blacking out for hours on end? He, who’s malnourishment has led to remiss judgment in the past and likely more in the future?)

The glass door parts and Dr. Aust steps inside as if he belongs there and not tucked away in the back of Sam’s mind. Sam takes in all of him from head to toe. The bald head, the crisp white lab-coat, and recorder tucked into his breast pocket. Stiff black slacks. Shiny black shoes.

One hand curled into a fist. The other severed and bandaged at the wrist.

Ah, _shit_.

“Dr. Bauer informed me of your…let’s say, _one-man coup_ in the arena. I see you are incessant as ever, but you are an even bigger nuisance than before.” He crouches so he’s nearly eye level with Sam. Dr. Aust cocks his head to the side, looking _at_ him than through him as if finally seeing Sam for the first time. “So tell me subject, why do you persist?”

Sam plasters himself against the glass wall, ignoring the sting of the IVs shifting in his limbs. His heart beats so fast he’s nearly dizzy with it. His brain is static and warning bells blare. _He’s alive_ , he repeats over and over like a dictum. _He’s alive. He’s_ alive.

“Nothing? That’s fascinating, considering how much you had to say the last time we met. You do remember that, don’t you? When you threatened to execute me?”

Dr. Aust changed.

This isn’t the man obsessed with Sam because of his proximity to “perfection.” This isn’t the man who took perverse joy in spoon feeding him leftovers or holding his hand. Squatting before him is a disillusioned man with one hand and a vengeance—a hateful, jilted zealot who butchered humans and spliced them back with all the wrong bits.

Sam turns his head, but Aust seizes his chin and forces him to look ahead. He pats his cheek, wiping a tear Sam didn’t even know escaped.

“I am a practitioner that prides himself in his knowledge, however, I cannot seem to _understand_ you, subject. You’ve lost in every sense, but, in some infinitesimal way, you always chose defiance. Sometimes I believe it’s that stubborn human pride I have yet to scrub away,” he squints at Sam and strokes the scraggly hairs on his chin. “Then again, it could be your total lack of comprehension about what _this_ —” he waves his arm around the room. “—means for you.

“We’ve taken each phase one step at a time before, but thanks to your insubordination, you’re on Accelerated Recalibration course. Do you know what that means?” Silence. “Stages Ten, Eleven, and Twelve are all the same, subject. This is rapid development and integration. Fifty million lines of coding that’s been developed longer than you’ve been _alive_ are being streamlined directly into your cerebrum. This is everlasting. You _have_ no time. So I ask you again, _why do you_ _persist_?”

Dr. Aust eyes widen, glistening with anticipation. Sam ducks his head but meets Aust’s stare. He lets out a stuttering breath. Wets his lips, then opens his mouth.

“Eat my shit.”

Getting slapped by an old man with one hand hurt more than it had any right to.

(That’s probably because he actually used the pistol that materialized in his back pocket.)

Dr. Aust’s body shakes with rage, angry in only a way _he_ could be. That neurotic, twitchy wrath where Sam can’t predict what he’ll do next. He grips Sam’s face—apparently still seeking touch, even now—and pulls it forward until their noses nearly brush. Then, in a violent, fast whisper, he speaks.

"Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, ‘Come.’ I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer _._ " Fire glows behind eyes, but they’re so fucking _cold_. His hold tightens. “You are the white horse! You are the white horse! Resist all you want, but _you are the white horse_!”

Dr. Aust snatches his fingers away as if Sam’s skin is molten. He stumbles backward, hits his elbow against the glass and _rushes_ out of his room. Sam can still hear and feel him long after he’s gone.

 [Д и х о т о м и я]

People believe they are more moral than they actually are, but the process of moral disengagement leads them to act immorally, and justify their bad behavior. Justification of bad behavior occurs in a variety of ways. First, they begin to focus on desired outcomes and rationalize the means to achieve them. If an outcome is important, they begin to believe that the “ends justify the means.” Dr. Aust, with his demented drive to create the pinnacle of mankind, is a textbook example of this—a man who clearly doesn’t believe he’s wicked. That everything he does is just _necessary_ and anything that goes to hell in the process is mere collateral damage. So what _defines_ immorality? Selfishness? Hate? Obsession? Perversion? _Apathy?_

What makes good _good_ and bad _bad_ , for someone like him whose stretched thin over the entire grayscale?

Because he feels the divide, like a gaping schism down the center of his mind. It’s tangible—as if he can physically hold this shift in his hand. There’s something different _in_ him. In his _mind_ as fifty million lines of coding overwrites his system.

His “alter ego” isn't personified. It's not a devil on his shoulder, cackling and seducing him to do evil, or even outright tormenting him with thoughts of—who knows—drowning puppies and burning down daycares. It's a thrumming presence of discordance—low simmering laying just beneath his consciousness. It's the acrid odor of fire, ash and boiling flesh. It’s the sharp bang of gunfire and bombs. The sight of burning red. Blistering heat and fire-blasted grounds.

He’s displaced bad enough as it, but he fears that while he's drifting this “alter ego” will augment until it's no longer prowling in the pits of his subconscious, but driving this bod

That’s what “it” is. And every time Dr. Aust or Bauer or Johnson refers to him as so, he’s reminded of this fact.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

_234 / 3 = 78 – (3 + 10 – 5) = 70 / 10 = 7 – 7 = 00804330, WAR ANGEL, ГОТОВ ПОДЧИНЯТЬСЯ. AКТИВ ГОТОВ ПРИНЯТЬ МИССИЮ. ЗАДАЧА REMOTE ВХОД АКТИВИЗИРОВАН. ЗАДАЧА ОТ АДМИНИСТРАТИВНОЙ CONTROL ОЖИДАНИЕ. ПОЖАЛУЙСТА, ПОДОЖДИТЕ_

_ЦЕЛЬ: ОЖИДАНИЕ__

_ЦЕЛЬ: ОЖИДАНИЕ__

_ЦЕЛЬ: ОЖИДАНИЕ__

_ЗАДАЧА: ОБРАБОТАННЫЙ_

 [Д и х о т о м и я]

Sam unfolds his wings and shoots upward like a bullet, cutting through the air. He lands on a higher platform tremulously, breath skittering and chest heaving, but otherwise unfazed. His enemy swirls wildly around, a gurgled screech of alarm tearing from its throat. It lifts its face upward and sniffs—likely catching his scent—swivels its head, then curls the rest of its body ( _bodies?_ ) in defense. This will be the easiest termination thus far. One or two minutes more minutes at most, if he can sever this thing’s spine fast enough. Dr. Bauer will be proud.

For his nth trial, he battles a human decapod. It’s a mingle of arms, legs and torsos poorly connected to a single head. It obviously didn’t receive the same amount of “care” and attention he did, because the thing is barely held together by dirty gauze petrified in blood and pus. The beast looks septic, a cesspool of bacteria and pestilence. The thing could barely crawl, let alone fight. At this point, he feels as if he’s just clearing out the most undesirable brutes in the Containment Level, seeing the Man-Pede isn’t even the worst thing Hydra’s dragged into this arena.

There was the time he fought the towering monstrosity from his first trip to the Containment Level. It took all of ten minutes to annihilate it, his fastest kill yet. Dr. Bauer rewarded him with a plate of half-recognizable food that he never ate. Then they drugged him to the point of catalepsy, showered him, and crammed him back in the glass box.

He fought a creature with wings, too. They drew from its back and was composed of flesh, a likely product of those DNA transmutes Johnson spoke of, but everything that could possibly go wrong _went_ wrong. The wings were mangled and incapable of flying. _These are your predecessors_ , his mind whispered as he wrapped his arms around its neck and _twisted_. He had watched its body fall limply, half expecting it to resuscitate like many of its brethren.

Not to mention the glut of deformities that looked like they formed from the most insidious half of his brain.

( _What’s the point—what the fucking_ point _?—_ )

He doesn't crave the fight. But he doesn't flinch anymore. The fifteenth time they sent him back in there, he knew what he had to do and how to do it. He learned how to make it quick, even if it’s messy.

It's a part of his daily routine. Just like waking up and brushing your teeth, he disassociates and kills.

He supposes it could be worse—maybe his opponents didn't have their tongue cut out so they could still scream and cry. Or they weren't so horribly mangled and still looked human when he turned the convention room into a slaughterhouse. Or Dr. Aust spoon fed him the braised remains of children.

_(—he can’t take it anymore, it’s too much—)_

So all in all, compared to what the others endure, he gets the better end of the deal. He’s still anatomically hominid (at least outwardly, sans the wings), he isn’t growing or missing limbs and he hasn’t had another sentient human connected to him. He still has (most of) his cognitive functions. He can still think for himself (for now). Really, he lucked out on this entire operation.

 _(—and he's begging for sweet oblivion, pleasepleaseplease just let him go, just let him_ **die** _—)_

After all, he could be dead.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

_The hotel near the airport is noisy and hectic, but it’s a significant upgrade; luxurious in comparison to those ratty inns. He’s taken the entire day to destress and make long-awaited calls to relatives, subtly hinting his return to the states after being MIA for seven months. Darlene was elated, half-crying on the phone. Sarah, on the other hand, met him with grim reception—glad he’s finally putting himself first, but distressed that it’s gotten this far._

_An assortment of odd-and-ends lay across the bed: a basic travel kit; an “I HEART HONDURAS” shirt and a pair of khakis he bought at a tourist center; half-eaten food from some unmemorable local restaurant;_ _the stupid fucking flip phone he’s seriously considering chucking into Lake Yojoa. Unfortunately, he had to ditch most of his weapons behind a bush somewhere since they wouldn’t make it past airport security. His wing-pack is an entirely different dilemma, considering those aren’t getting anywhere_ near _a plane and it’s not like he can just_ fly _them all the way back to D.C._

_He’ll figure out something like he always does._

_A knock sounds at his room door, gentle and acoustic. Sam quickly sweeps the clutter off his bed and into a carrying bag. He rubs his hands on his jeans, then opens the door._

_"Hey, uh, I—can I come in?"_

_He stares ahead for an unseemly sum of time, face flat, shoulders sagging and generally unimpressed._

_Steve stands at his door with his hands folded behind him, looking meek and miserable like a scolded child. His shoulders are nearly to his ears. If he grew any stiffer, his bones would probably lock that way forever. Anger and hurt sours Sam’s passive expression, pushing morose. However, he moves out of the way and parts the door silently, allowing him into the hotel, but sure to let him know he isn’t welcome._

_(Sam briefly wonders how Steve found him, but this is the nearest airport to their last location and he’s probably charmed the information out of the impressionable receptionist with his shy-cocky grin and a well-placed eyebrow. He could charm the skin off a snake and make grass swoon.)_

_Sam folds his arms and watches Steve fidget in the center of his room, looking entirely out of place like a pink elephant. He wrings his hands and clears his throat._

_“I want to apologize. Y’know. For being a dick.” Sam acrimoniously raises his brows. Steve’s fidgeting increases; his ears glow red but he continues otherwise unhindered. “I’m not gonna’ sit here and make excuses for what I said. It was wrong—_ I _was wrong. I should’ve never put you in a spot where you had to choose between yourself and me.”_

_“Alright.”_

_Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, appearing distraught. “Alright?”_

_“Apology accepted. All is forgiven. You’re absolved.” he lists, gathering stray items and tossing it in with the rest of his luggage. Steve breathlessly chases him around the side of the bed, clearly flustered and frustrated._

_“No. No I’m_ not, _Sam, don’t you do this to me.” Steve spins Sam around by the shoulders, making him drop a sock on the floor. “Just hear me out,_ please _, I’m—”_

_“I tried to kill myself.” he says, not as a way to derail or guilt trip, but to state a fact. The room is so quiet, it’s loud. Steve barely breathes. Sam doesn’t breathe at all. Contrary to belief, saying the truth out loud doesn’t make him feel any lighter. It’s like someone balanced an anvil on his sternum._

_“I tried to kill myself. Twice. The first time was a couple months after Riley died.” he looks at the sock on the floor; curls his feet in the rough carpet. “The second time was two days ago.”_

_“Sam, I—_ shit _—I should’ve—” Steve snaps his mouth shut to stop the flow of incomprehensible word garbage. His eyebrows draw together; his hold on Sam’s shoulders tightens fractionally._ “Sam.” _he breathes almost reverently, soft and mournful like prayer._

 _“I’m so…tired, y’know? Of everything. It’s been like this for a while now, Steve. I feel like shit—sun up ‘til sun down. I’m scraping for reasons to keep going and every day I find less and_ less. _And you know what the crazy part is?” he laughs mirthlessly and sits at the edge of the bed, scrubbing his hand down his face. “I won’t let myself feel anything else.”_

_While he’s definitely played a role, Steve isn’t to blame. It’s the ceaseless dead-end missions; never settling in one place long enough to cope; keeping secrets; watching his only partner descend into this fervid one-track-mindedness as he grows embittered with the lack of progress. It’s the stress of fighting to keep them both above water, even though he’s been drowning for a long time._

_And if he digs down deep, he knows this was a gradual self-sabotage._

_“I feel guilt being happy and it’s so_ fucked up _that I try to take other people’s pain instead. Follow that person all the way across Latin America because I think_ he _needs_ me _when actually_ I _need_ him _.” He’s not gonna’ cry. “I need you and you’ve_ never _needed me.”_

_Shit, he’s crying._

_Steve soundlessly drops to his knees, scooting into the space between the bed and Sam’s legs. He reaches forward. Aborts the action. Tries again, then_ finally _cradles Sam’s face between his big, warm palms. He brushes his fingers along his jaw, wipes the tears with his thumbs. His touch is nigh worshipful, but bold in its exploration. Sam blinks hard._

 _“That’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told me. I_ do _need you, Sam and I—I_ knew _something was wrong and I didn’t do_ anything _. I was afraid I’d lose you and almost lost you_ anyway _.” Steve strokes the overgrown stubble on Sam’s chin like it doesn’t desperately need to be trimmed. “I’ve been lost. I don’t have a home. And I think I’m running away, because outside of,” he chokes. “outside of_ this, _I have no place. This is_ it _for me.”_

 _There’s a pregnant pause followed by a startling,_ “Bullshit.” _Steve’s eyes go wide. “Then what about Nat and Clint and Tony? Y’remember, the Avengers? And Mrs. Cotes who runs that farmer’s market on 14 th street? Or our neighbors who invited us to their wedding—which we missed, by the way—or fuck, literally_ anyone _who cares about you?” Sam's voice breaks as he looks away. He swallows thickly, the words feeling like molasses as they roll off his tongue._

_"And...and I may not be Bucky, but you've got me. That's gotta' count for something, right?" He winces at his plaintive inflection, gathering the downy sheets between his fingers._

_Steve presses his forehead to Sam’s. They’re so close their noses bump and each breath is one to be shared. So close he can see the way Steve’s eyelashes fan across his cheek, the elusive streaks of green lost in the blue of his eyes._

_“I just want to go home,” he whispers and his voice is nearly lost between them._

_“Then we will.” Steve murmurs against his mouth, just a faint brush that has him craving for more. For_ touch _. Sam’s heart wells like a bank after a downpour. It pounds like war drums. He’s at his brink. And when Steve runs a finger over his plush bottom lip, drawing it from his teeth, he reaches the crest and_ freefalls.

_He inhales sharply. Runs his fingers through Steve’s short hair. Scratches his scalp hard enough to gather skin underneath his nails. Steve yelps into his mouth, but his hands only find a tighter grip around his waist. He considers a calmer approach—one more fit as follow up to a suicide confession—but he’s a broken dam of bottled emotions and repressed trauma._

_He’ll do what the fuck he wants._

_(Once again, that energy burns. It blazes hot like a wildfire; cracks like lightning splitting the sky. It’s capricious, it’s reckless, it’s electric. It’ll chew them up and spit them out. It’ll liberate them and bring them deliverance. They go willingly.)_

_For all of his scratching, Sam’s lips are tender. Supple in their natural softness, and even more so when Steve bites and nips_ and pulls _at them with his teeth. Until their bruised and puffy and he has no choice but to think of Steve when he runs his tongue over them. Sam clutches hard Steve’s clothes and just let himself go. He was far too tired to fight back._

 _Steve cradles neck with one hand, presses a thumb against the hollow of his throat with the other. Sups from his mouth as if he_ needs _this. As if he lives for the noises he rouses from Sam mouth—wrought, but airy and high._

 _"You're an idiot. You're such an_ idiot. _"_ h _e says without bite. Sam tightens his fist in Steve's hair. Ever the masochist, Steve’s voice rasps in his throat. He mouths along Sam, runs his tongue along Sam’s neck. Bites sharply into Sam’s fluttering pulse point before soothing it with a chaste kiss._

_When they finally part—too soon, it’ll always be too soon—they linger there. Sam waits for the storm to come, but no godly hand to reaches from the ethers to smite him. All he hears is the drone of yet another plane ascending and Steve’s stuttering breath filling the space._

_They’ve got so much shit to air out, entire truckloads of it, and this discussion is far from being over, but Sam will enjoy this levity. For once, he’ll allow himself a modicum of happiness._

_“Let’s go home.”_

 [Д и х о т о м и я]

He lost and Hydra won. It was inevitable.

He sees his defeat in Aust's smile and Bauer’s eyes and the way Johnson preens as if he got his dog to do a flip. The end was always near, but he never knew he’ll stare it in its face.

His body runs hot; he shudders regardless. He blearily glances around, his chest heaving in a sudden paroxysm.

 _This isn’t real,_ he tries to rationalize, but he knows what death smells like. Viscera rests at his feet. The arena glistens with fluid; a literal bloodbath. He makes a panicked attempt to wipe the blood off with no avail. It’s between his fingernails, permeating his lungs and clinging to him like a second layer of skin.

He doesn't remember coming here. He doesn't remember being told to fight. He doesn't remember _anything_ , but the receding sound of gunfire and bombs rings his head. He can still sense smoke in his throat like a freshly extinguished flame.

 _"Clocking 54 minutes and 34 seconds for the record."_ the intercom blares. Dr. Aust’s voice is proud. _“Welcome back, War Angel.”_

Like that, marked the expiry of Sam Wilson before he even had a chance to know him.

[Д и х о т о м и я]

_“We’ve gotta’ stop meeting like this.” Sam huffs, arms folded as he treads into an abandoned warehouse, one of many in New York. It’s been partly demolished, weathered from blizzard storms and disuse. The structure looks like its waiting for a hard gust of wind to finally topple it over. Snow drifts in from gaping holes scarcely covered by plastic tarps. Moonlight penetrates the murk, casting dapples of blue light against a debris-covered ground._

_The only way Sam knows Bucky is present is from the telltale military-grade artillery propped against a rusty steel beam. He lurks somewhere unseen, unbelievably silent for someone built like a brick shithouse with a mechanical arm._

_Bucky ignores Sam and appears from the shades, donned in a dark hoodie and a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. He dumps the contents of the bag on an upturned oil drum in the center of the room. A hodge-podge of hard drives and outdated tech clamber out. He picks up SD cards and rolls it around in his fingers, his jaw tight._

_“Where to this time?”_

_“Tibet.”_

_“_ China _?”_

_Bucky shoots him a flat look that reads “where else?” Despite the chilling cold, a flare of heat sparks in the pit of his stomach, filling his chest with hot anger._

_Bullshit, bullshit,_ bullshit. _That’s all it’s been since he’s started “working” with Bucky._

 _He's being led on. Bucky has him doing a run-around, hitting up Hydra bases across Latin America that're been decommissioned for fucking_ years. _There been nothing but deserted depots filled with more cobwebs and lingering shadows than foes—cold bunkers that hold less substance than the last, progressively getting more useless each mission._

 _He and Steve are finally_ home. _In four months, not exactly settled, but they’re trying their best to make a life with what they’ve been dealt. They have an apartment, they share a room and have movie nights and dinner dates—hell, they even have a dog who scratches up the furniture and drags his ass across the carpet. He and Steve are building something—moving_ forward _—and Bucky is here to throw them back into the fray after it took so long for Steve to take a step away from it. If even for a couple weeks at a time. He wants to help Bucky—God he does; it’s his most innate nature to fix what’s broken, no matter how much so— but he’s keeping secrets._

_Yet here he is, a martyr for pain; the byword of gratuitous self-flagellation._

_Bucky eyes him for a long time, almost gauging his reaction with gunmetal eyes that robotically absorb and analyze body language like a computer. Bucky drops the SD card in Sam’s open palm. On it, written in permanent marker on a strip of masking tape, it reads, #BASE: 005772_ Tibet, China.

_“So when do we start?”_

 [d i c h o t o m y]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [warning: religious imagery, cruel and unusual punishment to minors, graphic death of minors, graphic body horror, attempted suicide, cannibalism, drug abuse, self-harm]  
> note: alright so i was gonna have a pretty reason for this chapter took forever, but if we look back on the last three months i think that's a good enough reason.  
> side note: this chapter was originally gonna turn the horror volume up to the max before its mostly gone for the rest of the story (after all, this chapter was inspired by the pit and the pendulum and other gothic/english romanticism works) but it was gonna completely throw off the rest of the story so i had to take me a chill pill x20. a lot got scrapped.  
> side side note: next up, steve! though not in the way any of you hope to see him, lol


	5. s h i f t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning: N/A

**v**

**сдвиг**

[s h i f t]

FEBRUARY 16TH, 2015

 _It’s cold._ Unremittingly cold.

“Sam!”

He hasn’t experienced a chill this potent since that tour on the eastern front back in ‘45; the Howling Commandos and a backup team slogging across a boundless stretch of permafrost and taking refuge in bombed cities, gunshots and screams ringing in their ears long after everyone either perished or evacuated.

It was the coldest, darkest night he experienced—probably the coldest, darkest night of all _time_. That nameless Russian city felt like the ninth circle of hell and they were all drowning in Cocytus. He remembers his squadron huddling together for warmth, everyone pressed as close to one another as they could get, heedless of decorum. The gear then wasn’t nearly as durable as they are now: their coats not thick enough, boots not strong enough, gloves too thin to stop black fingers and palms.

Too many men were blue and rigid by dawn, still curled around the nearest soldier as if they died searching for the heat they couldn’t find, cursed to spend their afterlife still hunting it. The bodies were shallowly buried in snow before daybreak, stripped bare because they couldn’t waste any resources with propriety. Many of his brothers are still probably encased in ice, several feet underground and forgotten seventy years later. Yet, somehow, this cold is much worse.

“ _SAM_!”

The battlefield is just a backdrop to the static in his ears and mind. A feat, considering the frozen foothills of Nyenchen Tanglha transformed into a doom-laden shit storm of fire, bullets, and ice. Lightning cracks the sky in half, briefly washing the frontline in white before it plunges back into hellish blackness. Thunder rumbles like God’s deep-bellied laughter. Hail falls like brimstone.

Steve grips the shield in his hand, mouth ajar, sucking in desperate gasps of sooty air. His eyes burn. His tongue is dry. He can’t feel anything but the absence of _everything_. Even the bullets riddling him like holes in a pair of old sneakers do nothing; his body still toils like a well-oiled machine. The wounds will heal anyway. Erskine would be proud.

 _“I’m trying to get a read on Falcon,”_ Natasha’s voice cuts through his brain-fog like a knife past the ear-com. She sounds weary, a bit desperate. _“Nothing so far, but Clint’s working on it. We’re gonna’ find him.”_

After infiltrating the nth Hydra base, Steve thought he understood the pattern:

  1. He gets a message from Natasha on the whereabouts of some headquarter with possible “sensitive information.” Deployment and debriefing usually took anywhere from six to twenty-four hours. The op took about one.
  2. He and Sam bust in, armed to the teeth, into a decommissioned bunker in Who Knows, Nowhere with no data or working tech within miles.
  3. Rinse, wash and repeat another fifteen fucking times. That’s it.



The station in Tibet wasn’t supposed to be any different. It should’ve been empty. It should’ve been quick. It should’ve been the exact same as Puerto Cortés, León, and Diego de Almagro.

It should’ve, but it wasn’t.

Instead, they’re smack-dab in the center of an ambush—four underequipped soldiers versus entire squadrons of zealots swarming the mountain range like a nasty ant infestation. There’s a fleet of Humvees trucking their way up the mountainside. He’s even caught a glimpse of a fighter jet or two racing through the clouds. All _they_ have is one quinjet, a few assault rifles between the four of them and some shitty outdated coms Tony insisted still worked. By some grace, they endured long enough to devise an escape route that wouldn’t get them blasted out of the sky instantly.

Then immediately afterward, Sam got swept up in the skirmish, his line went dead and he’s been AWOL for the past fifteen minutes.

Two agents spring out in front of him, guns blazing, body jerking from the force of the recoil. He easily blocks with his shield, then pitches it to take out the nearest guy. The others he cut down smoothly with a swipe and a brutal kick to the sternum, sending one of the assailants screaming and flying off a ledge. He gets tagged in his blind spot—a spot that Sam usually covers, but _fuck_ he’s not gonna’ think about that right now—with a bullet right in his side. It would be a nonissue if the attacker was anywhere within sight, however, it’s clear they’ve got snipers camping somewhere above. He grits his teeth and dives for cover behind an abandoned truck before someone scatters his brains on the rocks.

Super-serum or not, this one-sided fight is getting draining. _Fast_. As quickly as he eliminates a soldier, an entire slew comes cropping up just as soon. He’s completely exhausted his weapons supply and is now running off whatever arms he scrounges from dead bodies. It can’t be much better on Clint or Nat’s side, either.

It’s a silent rule that no one dare mentions the elephant in the room, a problem that becomes more harrowing as the minutes tick by. If they wait, they will probably die. If they leave, Sam will _definitely_ die.

The Catch 22.

 _“I’ve checked the east and southeast portion of the base with a drone,”_ Clint says, voice tinny, yet still sounding absolutely bushed. Steve appreciates his attempt to put on a brave face, but Clint’s practically sputtering into the microphone. _“I’m not picking up anything.”_

“Did you check the S1 building?”

 _“There’s nothing there_ ,” Natasha adds. He hears a chorus of bullets from her side, likely from a turret or something equally as alarming. _“’Checked S1 through S4 and the western barracks and it’s empty. Cap’, there’s no one.”_

Fright sends fire running down his veins, yet a creeping hopelessness deadens his limbs, his heart. He swallows hard.

“I’m gonna’ check it out myself.”

_“We can’t risk that—we need to stick as close together as we can.”_

“If Falcon is hiding somewhere over there—“

 _“He’s_ not _.”_

“If he’s not on the battlefield or the station, then _where_ the hell else would he be?!”

_Strewn over the mountain range. Sunken at the bottom of a couloir. Stuck between the big, grinding tires of a Humvee._

They won’t say it, but he can still hear it in their voices.

“ _Cap_ —“

“We’re _not_ leaving Sam behind,” he hisses slowly, peering over the hood of the truck to scan the fiery battlefield. It’s about as clear as he could hope with more than a hundred agents out for his blood. “And that's an _order_.”

Maybe he’s being irrational. Maybe he’s being reckless. Maybe he’s not fit to lead when he’s in a state like this, but he can’t—he can’t _lose_ Sam so soon after getting him back. He put everything before Sam four months ago, in Latin America. Now, _finally_ , he’ll put Sam before everything else—no matter the cost.

 _“Cap, Cap, Cap! Look up! Look up_!” Clint’s frantic voice breaks the tense silence in his ear.

As if on cue, the sky explodes in angry light, lightning gripping the clouds like claws before sucking back into the ethers. He tips his head up, squinting against the rain and soot. Above, a small dot braves the squall, fighting a violent gale as it ascends. Everything goes dark again, but Steve knows he’s there.

“Sam! Sam can you hear me?” he tries hopelessly to reconnect with Sam’s ear-com, but his line remains a cacophony of static and noise. Anticipated, but that doesn’t stop the pang of disappointment. He waits with abated breath for the next burst of lightning to illuminate the sky. It’s not long before it does.

The dot no longer rises, but veers north, away from the foothills and towards Lake Namtso at a break-neck speed. Sam’s still following the escape plan—it’s a clear sign to _get the fuck out_ if there ever is one.

“Everybody—to the quinjet, _now_! _Go_!”

Steve doesn’t wait for a response before he springs up and tears through the icy slopes like a bulldozer. There are at least a foot and a half of snow encrusting the base of the mountain, yet Steve dodges bullets and agents with bolstered agility. He hurdles over debris and bodies half-buried in snow. An explosive skid across the ground ahead of him, but he clears several yards before it has the chance to detonate. A turret sprays bullets hot on his foot trail, although nothing hits. He’s too swift, too focused.

They landed the jet on the isolated end of a low mastiff, not too far away from the roaring epicenter of the battle. The entire fight, there was a nagging fear that an adversary would spot it and blow their entire getaway plan to smithereens, but all the worry was for naught. He lets out an elated sigh as he half-slides, half-tumbles on the slippery downslope, his eye catching the chrome paint job of the aircraft, glinting red from the fires.

“Cap!” Natasha calls from the foot of the jet, sparing him a glance before clambering into the cockpit. Shadows from approaching soldiers creep along the ground. He doesn’t waste another second on this miserable crag.

They’re on the air in record speed, hellbent on putting as much distance between them and Tibet as possible, but the damage is done. Clint looks like he’s on his last line, ashen and spluttering blood like he’s ill with consumption. An agent must’ve clipped his lung amongst other places, seeing his bullet-proof vest looked more like a tatty rag than anything else. Steve does the best he can with a basic bandage kit and rudimentary first aid knowledge. Natasha mumbles words of reassurance and brushes her thumb over his bloody knuckle; its uncharacteristically soft and expressive. He feels like he’s intruding a something private, something he didn’t know existed. However, it’s frighteningly clear Clint’s good as dead if they don’t rush him to a hospital— _quick_.

But Clint isn’t the beginning and end of their problems, unfortunately.

“We’ve got company!” Nat hisses, wrenching the yoke and jerking the jet downward. Steve goes flying off his feet and into the wall—seeing the jet’s only a two-seater and both are occupied—but is up quick enough to see a missile _narrowly_ barrel past them and burst in the air like a firework. The blast is forceful enough to make the jet shudder violently.

 _Shit_.

Oh, right. He almost forgot about the two F-15E Strike Eagles circling Nyenchen Tanglha like bloodthirsty vultures. Between the vicious turbulence and the two military fighter airliners trying (and nearly succeeding _several_ times) to blow them out of the sky, escape isn’t as clear-cut as they planned.

Four anti-aircraft missiles come shuttling out from the second Strike Eagle. Steve glances at the radar, watching the four dots diverge and reassemble—two aimed at the thrusters, the others going for the wings.

“Nat!” he warns, gripping the pilot’s chair.

“I’m on it. Hold on tight and don’t let go!”

Steve’s already braced himself, prepared for the sharp turn. Instead, the jet nosedives—a few feet shy of a sixty-degree drop. There’s a moment between transitioning from flying to falling that feels like floating in mid-air. But once that trice ends, the G-Force hits so hard it’s as if he rammed a concrete wall. Wind picks up around them, sounding like they’re in a flimsy tube of foil barreling through a tunnel. Alarms and trills and little red lights jump to life, getting louder and _louder_ as the rushing waters get closer and _closer_.

His heart suspends in his chest. God, it feels like he’s crashing into the Artic all over again. The ice in his veins, the cinderblocks of dread weighing him further into a pit.

“Nat!” he shouts again, voice strangled with horror.

“Steve, I need you to trust me!”

(He can still hear Peggy’s voice in his ear, talking him through his “last” moments. Voice still strong despite the tears. Words placating him as he awaited the cold embrace of death, promising things that would never come to fruition. He spent every second until the very last in sweet denial.)

“ _Steve_!”

“ _I do_!” he licks his lips. “I do—I trust you.”

The dregs of Peggy’s voice wanes away.

They’re mere feet above the water when Natasha heaves the yoke upward, leveling them before the aircraft is swallowed by the bottomless lake. She kicks the jet into full throttle. The bombs dive harmlessly into the water, too slow to correct their paths after such a sudden acceleration. Steve can’t help the stupid grin on his face. Even Clint, half-conscious in his chair, manages to lift a corner of his mouth.

However, they know better to celebrate for too long. Shadows from the two jets above cast over the rushing waters, dangerous and foreboding. Their quinjet model isn’t equipped with any armaments and Steve highly doubts Natasha can outmaneuver trained fighter pilots in a head-on dogfight.

Steve’s racking his brain for a somewhat sane plan when a figure blips past the head of the jet. Natasha cranes her neck upward. Steve pushes his way further into the cockpit just in time to watch that figure ascend and stick itself to the belly of a Strike Eagle.

God, who is boneheaded enough to attach himself to a moving aircraft with Nazis in it? Only the guy who straps on a pair of wings with a mini ion thruster a foot away from his ass, that’s who.

With wide, rapt eyes, they watch Sam crawl underneath the plane, pulling items from some bag and slapping it onto the jet. The devices flash red once they’re on, lighting up the fuselage like a runway. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that Sam’s found some toys to play with while he was MIA.

The second jet opens light fire with bullets but quickly stops once it does more harm than good. The first F-15 tries to throw him off with a barrel roll, however, thanks to the one functioning piece of Stark technology, the suction gloves and shoes keep him firmly in place. Then just like that, Sam leaps off the jet, tucks his wings and swoops in the opposite direction.

Next thing he knows, that entire jet explodes in hot, bright flames, propelling shrapnel in every possible direction. The burnt shell plummets to the lake, leaving no sign trace of it but thick smoke.

“Sam, you son of a bitch,” he marvels out loud, pride and adoration and relief coloring his voice.

(He often wonders, how _did_ he get lucky enough to land Sam? Someone who's so earnest and selfless, yet makes it clear he isn’t here to shoulder Steve’s shit anymore. Someone who’s saved his lily ass more times than he can count—even from _himself_. He’s crafty and sharp as a whip, picking up slack Steve didn’t even know he left behind—his equal in every sense. And, fuck, maybe when this whole thing is over and they settle down for real, he’ll talk to Sam about something _more_ —)

Sam gets three bombs on the last Strike Eagle before everything falls to shit right before Steve’s eyes. Something goes wrong—something _always_ goes wrong—and Sam’s suddenly darting away from the jet. The explosives trigger behind them, torching the left wing and thruster. The F-15 goes down—careening out of the sky, but not before deploying its last set of anti-aircraft missiles. The last laugh, even in death.

Natasha frantically pulls upward. The jet’s alarms trill and beep as the missiles break formation. Three chases after the quinjet. The last one—the last one doesn’t.

“ _SAM!”_

There’s a flare of blinding white. A plume of smoke and exhaust trailing Sam’s spiraling body as he plunges down, _down_ , **_down_** in the middle of Lake Namtso. Into the second biggest salt lake on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Everything is quiet. He doesn’t recognize he’s speaking until Natasha replies.

“S-Steve—we can’t. It’s, it’s…”

“For _fuck’s sake_ Natasha, I said _turn around_!”

“We _can’t_!”

 _‘Why not?’_ is at the tip of his tongue, desperate to be released, but he knows the answer.

  1. The quinjet’s been hit right its fuel tank and it’s quickly running short on gas.
  2. Clint won’t survive the backtrack.
  3. It’s nearly impossible to find one person at night, during a storm and submerged in 768 billion cubic meters of water.



He sinks to the floor, defeated. He pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around himself.

It’s never been so cold.

[с д в и г]

When he finally rouses, he wants to go back to sleep instantly. Every limb is battered and heavy. His right eye has sealed shut from a punch he doesn’t recall during combat. Each breath is loud like an old engine. And God, it feels like someone took an ax and cleaved him in the back of his skull. Repeatedly.

He’s not on the floor of the quinjet anymore, so that’s a progression. Rather, he’s tucked into thin, white sheets on a narrow bed. The room is dim and gray with the scarce rays of morning light casting through the curtains. Spots of bright color flitter on the wall—or maybe that’s just his vision.

The motel room smells of old blood, antiseptics, and medicine. A hint of perfume and the vestiges of a meal. He achingly turns his head and takes in the unkempt bed beside his. A plethora of used gauzes and drug store medical equipment rest on the nightstand, along with a stupid amount of bloody shells—obviously extracted from his body. If he moves, he can feel the tug of stitches.

Steve attempts to sit upright, but he’s cuffed to the bedpost at the wrist. He pulls it experimentally.

"I figured I'd be able to hear the headboard snapping in half before you killed me in my sleep.,” a voice says from the foot of his bed. He startles, then relaxes a fraction once he recognizes red hair.

“Natasha,” he says, for the sake of saying it. He doesn’t really know what to do with himself anymore. Nothing makes sense.

She leans against a wooden chair, feigning casualty, but he can tell she’s overwrought. Carrying a load and soldiering through it as if she isn't bending under the pressure. She’s got these deep, purple bags under her eyes—the deathly hue of nightshade. Even swamped in an oversized hoodie, she appears frail and wounded—all ashen and gaunt looking. The only color on her skin are the bruises.

“Sorry about the shiner, by the way.” she taps her eye. “I put you on a morphine drip a couple days ago. Didn’t go over well, obviously.”

He wonders if he’s the one that busts her lip.

“A couple days?”

“Four, to be exact. If we’re not counting the times you woke up delirious and trashed the room until you passed out.” Steve glances around in alarm—the place was a little messy, but far from trashed. Natasha tongues the cut on her lip until it bleeds a little. “This is our third hotel room.”

“Where’s Clint?”

“Hospital. His wounds were too complicated—nothing I could fix by myself. He’s checked in under an alias.”

“Is he…?”

“Okay? No, not really. He’s been in ICU this whole time. They can’t stabilize him, but he’s…still around. For now.”

There’s a sullen lull in the conversation.

(This early in the morning, he would’ve already been awake for an hour now, waiting for Sam to rise at six o’ clock, like he did every day. He’d lay there in bed, eyes half-lidded and watch him rouse—slowly, then all at once. Dark eyes lit by the fledgling sun, a smile already forming on his lips. Sam is the only person he knew did that—just woke up smiling. Not particularly because he’s happy, but out of appreciation. Thankful that he didn’t end it back in Puerto Cortés and could watch a million more sunrises.)

“He’s dead isn’t he?”

Natasha’s jaw tightens. It’s a pointless question, a cruel one. They both saw the missile detonate right above Sam. They watched him get knocked out the sky like they were only up there to watch. And if by some miracle he managed to survive the explosion and descent, those tumultuous black waters are unforgiving.

“We left Sam.” his voice cracks.

“I didn’t want to.” _But I had to._

It's what she's been trained to do: put practicality and logic over everything else. She assessed the possibilities and made the choice most rational for the mission. Inside that shielded mind, she’s all numbers and algorithms. Statistically, Sam was a liability. Therefore, he was extracted from the equation to increase the likelihood of their survival.

In layman’s terms: Steve would’ve gotten them all killed. Nat saved as many people as she could. Sam’s still dead.

“If it was Clint,” his voice rasps. It comes out gritty like sandpaper, wrought with fury and grief. “If it was Clint, would you have left?”

And he knows he’s in no position to ask her this—to even consider this. After all, Natasha was Sam’s friend. They were close. But he’s hollow and he’s hurt and he honestly wishes he could give a fuck about anyone else’s feelings right now.

Nat shoots right up and leaves in the same breath. She doesn't slam the door closed—she's far too controlled for that. No, Natasha will bottle it up and pretend like it never happened, but God, she'll remember.

Steve closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

[с д в и г]

He dreams of swelling tides—black as ink, deeper than space. Lightning bright enough to blind him, even in his slumber. He's free falling and the lake parts, a hungry, gaping whirlpool. He sails into the heart of it and the moment he’s in, it swallows him up. The same way it swallowed the missiles and the fighter jets and Sam—

Steve jerks awake, choking and gagging on the nonexistent water. His mouth tastes like salt. He rushes to the bathroom and throws up nothing but bile. He hasn’t eaten since before the mission.

By the time he’s finished, he's shaking violently. There are spider-web cracks where he gripped the toilet too hard.

He doesn't cry, though—he hasn’t shed a single tear this entire time. He isn't registering the pain. It feels like he's afloat, disconnected from reality and he's watching life pass by through blurry, blue-tinged lenses.

He grew up during the Great Depression. He’s seen scrawny little kids like himself dead all over streets from sickness, poverty, and malnourishment. Loss was ingrained in his childhood—a soul-sucking defining factor. Going to war never made it any better, seeing friends and soldiers picked off like horse flies faster than you can think. Then, waking up 70 years after WWII to learn that his few surviving friends are gone only further desensitized him.

He doesn't cry because, in the back of his mind, he's been preparing himself for this to happen again.

Steve forces himself into the shower and scrubs until his skin is raw and ruddy. The only thing he can think of are his last words to Sam; an empty command to be wary of the ice. The last meaningful phrase he uttered was a goddamn _lie_.

 _“You know I’ve got you, right?”_ he remembers saying on that stifling trip from D.C. to Stark’s quinjet hangar.

_“Yeah, I know.”_

And he can’t get Sam’s voice out of his head. It’s just that conversation playing over and _over_ again, filling him with hot shame and anger until he punches a hole through shower wall. He slips on the clothes Natasha bought him and fits a hat over his head, heading out to clear his mind.

They’ve wound up in a city named Lhasa, not too far off from Tibet. It’s beautiful with its snow-capped mountains and artful architecture, holding its ancient roots even in the modern areas. However, most of the experience is lost on him. He passes by in complete anonymity, breathing in the smoky city air.

He’s nibbling on a yak wrap he doesn’t remember buying at a park he doesn’t remember walking to when he gets a call. For an irrational second, he thinks it's Sam. But then he realizes the only who calls him on his Stark is Tony.

“Rogers,” he answers, going in for another bite. His hands are empty. When the fuck did he finish his wrap?

_“We have an issue.”_

Steve’s at loss for a proper response. He decides smashing the phone is not one of them.

“An issue?”

_“With Wilson’s wing pack. I’m picking up some wonky data—doesn’t make sense with what Nat told me.”_

He had no idea Nat already debriefed Tony, let alone got in contact with him yet. Nevertheless, he didn’t really expect her to keep him up-to-date on conversations after the last time they spoke. Somehow, telling Tony makes Sam’s death… _official_. Like before he was wading in a pool of ambiguity. Now he needs to think about a funeral and a casket and telling Sam’s mom— _God, Sam’s mom_ —

 _“Rogers.”_ Tony manages not to sound aggravated at his nonresponse. Pity laces his tone. Steve doesn’t want it.

“I’m here.”

He’s not; he’s barely hanging on.

_“I need to get a better read on this anomaly, just in case I’m getting incorrect feedback from the remote satellites.”_

“…Alright.”

_“This, meaning you need to go back to Lake Namtso.”_

His nightmare rushes to the forefront of his mind in stunning clarity. Steve freezes.

“Look, I can’t, alright? It’s not—“

 _“Steve,_ please _. I know I can be a dick—a lot, really and often—but I’m not a complete shit head. I wouldn’t ask you this if I didn’t absolutely need you to. If this data is right, Rogers, this could be crucial. This changes a lot of things.”_

“What about Natasha, why can’t she do it?”

_“I already asked, but she’s with Barton at that hospital until my medics arrive. I don’t like begging, it doesn’t look good on me, Rogers.”_

“Fine. I’ll do it, but I’m in and out in less than thirty or else I’m leaving.”

_“That’s the plan.”_

Steve pries himself from the bench. How long has he been sitting out here, damn it?

“And what about Hydra? Last time I checked they had the whole goddamn mountain occupied.”

 _“Gone. I checked.”_ Steve doesn’t ask how. He isn’t in the mood for incomprehensible technobabble. _“Plus, the police started getting involved and Hydra’s kinda’ got this covert thing going for them. You should be good to go as soon as possible.”_

“On it.”

He hangs up.

[с д в и г]

Lake Namtso roughly translates to “heavenly lake.” As he stands on the frozen shore, watching the sun sink below the mountain range, he understands the nomenclature. Seemingly, the whole world is cast in a luminescent orange. Aside from the weak ripples lapping against the shore, it appeared as if the sky and lake were one, endless body. The wind tickles his face and kisses his cheeks. It seems nothing like the gelid Hellmouth he braved mere days ago. He kicks a pebble closer to the water. Darkly, he watches the lake gobble it up on the next wave, never to be seen again.

He answers the phone the moment it buzzes in his pocket.

_“You there?”_

“Yeah.”

_“How close are you to the water?”_

“I’m right on the shore.”

_“Good. Now throw the phone as far into Namtso as you can.”_

“What?”

_“Throw the goddamn phone, Rogers.”_

Steve winds his arm back, then pitches with all his strength. He gets a call from his burner phone several minutes later.

“So, what the hell is going on here?”

_“After I redesigned Wilson’s wing pack, I revamped the model with Stark technology. Ion thrusters, spatial sensors, a slimmer pack form—all made with—“_

“Tony I really, _really_ don’t want to listen to you brag—“

_“No, no, no! You’re going to listen to me and you’re going to listen well, damn it! Everything that comes out of my lab is embedded with RFID tags and GPS tracking units—shit that can get picked up with specially designed radars made to locate my tech from anywhere in the world. You see where I’m going here?”_

“No.”

_“Doesn’t matter. Thrown into subspace or submerged under a billion gallons of water—the only way the tracking units won’t show up on my radar is if they’ve been decommissioned. And you know the only way you can decommission my tracking units? With a pretty fucking amazing tech-engineer, that’s how. And none of them exist at the bottom of Lake Namtso.”_

Steve’s fingers tremble, heart caught in his throat. His eyes burn. He blinks away the tears, but they escape from the corners of his eyes in fat streams.

“Jesus, Stark, what are you telling me?”

 _“The pack’s not in the lake. Good chance that Sam’s not in it either since I highly doubt anybody’s wasting resources on getting some busted wings.”_ Tony’s voice suddenly lacks the excitement, now bordering on grim.

“You’re not telling me something.”

 _“Yeah, well—the shitty part is that this basically confirms that Sam’s been captured by Hydra and we now have literally_ nothing _to help find him with.”_

Just like that, he’s been broken again.

[s h i f t]

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter? whack. boring. not fun to write at all. And super duper short, but i literally had to chop this bad boy off the bulk of the original chapter 5, because it really didn't flow with the rest of the chapter. so if this is off(tm) this is why.


	6. a c h e

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warnings: mentions of domestic abuse, demonic southern triple contractions

**vi**

**ache**

[Б о л ь]

FEBRUARY 21ST, 2015

 _He can’t sleep._ He hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. Sam would admonish Steve if he was there. Too bad he’s not.

He tried everything. A few sleeping pills that made him groggy at best. Counting imaginary sheep forward and backward—t _wice_. He’s replayed the _Soothing R &B and Soul _playlist on his phone so many times, he memorized the order of the songs. He’s been awake at various stages of anxious, frantic and melancholy since he last stepped foot in China. Nothing seems to get rid of the tautness creeping up his spine like ice.

Steve’s a statue in the luxury plane seats, form stiff and eyes stony as he stares out the window and into the bleak, gray sky. The flute of aged Chateau Lafite sits untouched beside him; it grows warmer as the hour wears on. He doubts the flight attendant knew when she offered, but alcohol’s been worthless to him since the 40s.

He supposes looking like a corpse in his chair is a better alternative than the agitated pacing he was doing earlier. He’s hours away from Tibet, somewhere over the Pacific now, but his skin still feels like it’s dusted in rime and frost bitten. Goosebumps pock his arms like a rash. Every other hour, he snaps his jaw shut to stop his teeth from chattering.

He thinks of Sam. A lot.

Four months together isn’t much—it’s infinitesimal compared to relationships that stack years underneath their belts. It’s hardly enough time to plan for their future. Not even enough time to say “I love you” properly without getting dubious looks from your lover. Logically, in such a short window (preluded by months of intense emotional constipation and heartache) their relationship should be fawn-legged, frail emotionally and physically. However, he and Sam’s never done anything slow; these are the same people who went leaping off skyscrapers with full confidence the other will catch him before the pavement does. And back then, they’ve only met a few times at most.

That volatile spark between them went untapped for too long—far, _far_ too long. That was Steve’s mea culpa. Since the moment they embarked on that futile merry-go-round search for Bucky, he’s felt it. God, he’s felt it when Sam smiled. He’s felt it every sweltering night in those skeevy motels. He’s felt it while they undressed in the dark—reeking of sweat and desperation after chasing another Bucky-less hideout—wondering why Sam chose to stay when the entire operation was clearly a failure; when _he_ was clearly a failure. And in every instance, he ignored it and by relation, Sam.

Jesus Christ, he fucked up _horribly_ , now that Steve thinks about it. He completely removed Sam from his element, isolated him in foreign territory (except for the one or two times he took a break to visit his sister), then proceeded to be ham-fisted, tight-lipped and distant for all three months in Central America. At one desperate, unfeeling point, he inadvertently decided the outcome of that manhunt was more important than anything else. If Sam’s destructive, self-sacrificing guilt was going to help him find Bucky, then so be it.

Well, until Steve learned he screwed Sam over so bad he tried to kill himself for the second time.

Their relationship didn’t absolve Steve of his transgressions, yet there wasn’t contrition hanging over their heads like a burdening cloud. He doesn’t deserve Sam; he doesn’t think he ever _will_ , not in this lifetime at least; Steve squandered that chance when he let Sam play second-stringer to nostalgia. That won’t stop him from trying, though.

And he’ll start making progress by getting him the hell away from Hydra, where ever he is now.

Heels click sharply as the flight attendant walks down the aisle, a holo-pad in hand. She hands him the device with a smile, then disappears where she came from. Immediately it flares to life, projecting four blue-tinted, grainy screens. It takes him a second to realize he’s in a video conference with Stark, Rhodey, Banner and Nat. He hopes he doesn’t look as dreadful as he feels.

 _“This isn’t usually how I like to hold these kind of meetings, but we’ve already wasted our window of opportunity, so we’re in a crunch.”_ Tony opens, appearing bedraggled. He’s streaming from his lab, and from all the unfamiliar technology lying in the background, he must’ve been working on something. _“We need a game plan. Quick.”_

< “We have to start off small and face the facts before we can get anywhere,”> Rhodey intones, ever the voice of reason. < “And right now we’re not working with much information. We don’t have a clue where Wilson is and we don’t know why Hydra took him.”>

[“Maybe they wanted information on Cap? Weaknesses.”] Natasha says, but Bruce quickly interjects.

{“I doubt it. Wilson doesn’t have any access to Cap’s medical performance records, or anything that’d be useful in a fight. It’s hardly anything to capture someone for, knowing well enough that the rest of the Avengers would look for him.”}

[“You think it’s a trap?”]

{“No. They would’ve at least thrown us a bone so we know where to go, otherwise.”}

“It was a last-minute decision,” the conference goes silent when Steve speaks. “Hydra couldn’t have had any plans for Sam before we got ambushed. They were trying to take him out just like the rest of us; if they intended on abducting him from the get-go, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have taken the risk to shoot him out the sky with an anti-aircraft missile.”

There’s a pregnant pause.

<“So sometime during the fight, Hydra saw something about Sam that was worth taking?”>

[“It could’ve been for revenge.”]

_“They would’ve just let him drown. Nobody’s wasting resources pulling Wilson out the middle of Lake Namtso for revenge.”_

{“That means whatever they’re doing is worth it, then. Whatever they saw in him, it was worth going back for and decommissioning his wings so he’s off the radar.”}

Steve’s jaw locks, fingernails digging into the leather of the private jet’s armrest. A grim stillness settles over them. For a while, all he hears is his heart beating in his chest.

_“Does anyone else here find it odd that Hydra was capable to pull this off? Anybody, or is it just me?”_

<“Which part, the ambush or the abduction?”>

“ _Both_. _Y’know, for a secret society that was supposed to have been destroyed from the inside out, they have a shitload of weapons and canon-fodder. I mean, it’s been eleven months—not even a_ year _yet— since S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra were allegedly dismantled, and you mean to tell me they’re back on their feet this quickly?”_

{“It doesn’t make sense.”}

 _“You’re right Banner, it doesn’t make sense!”_ Tony’s speech grew shrill and fast, as it did when he was onto something. _“If Hydra was desperate and straggling—as they should be, just so you know—they wouldn’t have the man power to lead an ambush with that many soldiers or weapons o-or have_ fucking _F-15 Strike Eagles_. _Which were customized by the way, since standard F-15 models aren’t_ equipped _with anti-aircraft missiles!”_

Everything Steve sacrificed nearly a year ago was for nothing. Sam, Nat, Fury, Sharon and so many more—all the blood and sweat they shed in the name of the greater good and it was for _jack shit_. Peggy’s legacy fell apart right in front of his eyes, and yet, _yet—_

“While me and Sam were in South America,” Steve licks his lips with a dry tongue. “We came across a multitude of bases all over the place. Some big, although most small; all mothballed at the time, but they exist. Hell, the station in Nyenchen Tanglha had five different structures built into the side of a mountain—who _knows_ how many locations Hydra’s occupied in China or Asia or the rest of the _goddamned_ planet.”

And there just waiting. Waiting on something big enough to put them all in use.

[“This is more than just Sam, isn’t it?”] Natasha’s voice hangs in the air, suspended by tension so thick Steve suffocates in it. His fingertips are red from digging into the tissue of the seat.

 _“Alright, we’re done for today. We’ll try this again once everyone’s back in the States and has a decent night of sleep, how’s that sound?”_ There’s a low murmur of assent, then one at a time they retire for the day until it’s just Steve and Stark. Tony rubs a hand over his face and slumps in his chair, shoulders wilting under stress. He looks worn-out, no longer holding that zippy, loud-mouthed confidence from seconds before.

_“Rogers, I need you to sit this one out, at least for a couple days.”_

Steve’s eyes fly open.

“What? Absolutely not—that’s not happening. We need all hands on deck; you said it yourself that the time to act is _now_.”

_“You’re barely functioning; you’re running off steam and you need to cool down. You’re not gonna’ be of any use like this, at least not the way we need you to be.”_

“Sam’s trail is getting colder the longer we wait. There’s no _time_ for me to ‘cool down.’” Steve’s voice rises, an agitated lilt to it.

_“You think I don’t know? Believe it or not Rogers, you’re not the only one that gives a damn about Wilson. Yeah, his suit may be lame and his superhero name is god awful, but he’s a good person. I’m doing everything that I can to bring him home, too.”_

Steve slowly uncurls his fingers from the armrest, suddenly weighed in grief. Tony sighs, massaging his temples in slow, even circles.

 _“He has a family, Steve. A family that loves and cares and worries about him, too. This isn’t something you can just send in a text or email and then fuck right off for who knows how long. They deserve to know._ They _need time to heal.”_

The holo-pad goes dead.

[Б о л ь]

“Mr. Rogers, you’re here! Oh boy, I didn’t know when you were coming back; Cap’n was starting to get antsy.”

Steve’s barely through the foyer when Cap’n comes bounding towards him, tongue out with his good eye wide and sparkling. He stoops low and runs his fingers through the dog’s soft, golden fur. In turn, he whines and nuzzles his wet nose into Steve’s palm.

Junie hops up from his living room couch like a spring, an endless well of verve and joy. She’s short with an unruly afro, always decked out in lurid colors and her trusty pair of sneakers, the poster child of tweenhood. June Thornton’s the neighbor’s daughter; Sam’s favorite kid in their apartment complex, seeing she’s always eager to watch Cap’n when they’re gone.

Despite leaving his key to a twelve-year-old, his home is in mint condition. Carpet vacuumed, counters wiped down, and dishes washed. Aside from the living room where Junie watched television and ate popcorn, everything is spotless—cleaner than it was when he and Sam hastily departed last week.

“You know you didn’t have to clean up for us, right?” Steve says with a subdued smile, the most he can conjure up right now. Junie blows out her cheeks and drags her foot on the carpet, a telltale sign her story will be told all in one breath with lots of gesticulating.

“Alright, don’t get mad at me, okay? So I was taking Cap’n for a walk with Ma—who told me to tell you hi by the way, so _hi_ —a couple’a days ago, right? But it had just rained. Like, really bad. Like, this-whole-side-of-the-complex-lost-power bad. So it was _wet_ and _muddy_ and _nasty_ outside. Me and Ma go walking through the park after the storm, when alluva sudden— _bam_!” Junie makes a garbled sound-effect when she smashes her fist into her hand. “Lightning! Turns out the storm is here for part two! And I thought I put Cap’n’s leash on right, but apparently not ‘cause he just _bolted_ and started running through the mud and do you know how long it took to calm him down? Like forever— _two_ forevers. And uh, long story short—Cap’n tracked mud all over and Ma made me clean the place up.”

Steve blinks, mouth slightly ajar. No matter how mundane the event, Junie could make anything sound bigger-than-life. Like the time she caught a lizard on a gate and spent five minutes retelling the story in vivid detail.

Tony would like this kid.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?”

“Not at all. I should’ve warned you that Cap’n’s easily frightened before I skipped town. He’s a big baby.” Steve digs through his wallet for a few twenties. Cap’n huffs and paws at his shoes indignantly.

“Oh! I almost forgot,” Junie hums, digging around in her pocket. She fishes out a folded piece of paper. “Ma wrote down the recipe to her fried shrimp batter for Mr. Wilson. ‘Told him to call her as soon as possible to ‘get this thing going.’ I think she’s trying to do another cookout like the one from last year, since you guys missed it. ‘Dunno, or maybe she just wants Mr. Wilson to make ribs again.”

Junie pets Cap’n and kisses his head before bidding farewell. The paper slips from Steve’s hand as he slumps against the wall, nauseous.

He wonders how long it’ll take everyone to notice Sam’s absence, to parse Steve’s thinly veiled lies when people inevitably start asking questions. Unlike him, Sam’s an integral part of any community he occupies. People naturally gravitate towards him, drawn in by his charm and warmth the same way Steve was. They look up to him—idolize him in a way—in these niche neighborhoods where people prefer Sam’s authenticity over Captain America’s “self-fellating, nationalistic propaganda.” (His neighbors’ words, not his. He can’t say that he disagrees.)

Mentally, he’s counting down until the first inquiry, his first fabrication. Steve’s never been a particularly good liar; especially not when he’s forced to do it in the wrinkled face of Mrs. Palmer when she requests Sam’s help gardening next Sunday. Or when Devante asks Sam for tutoring on the weekdays, because unsurprisingly, Sam’s a fucking math ace. Or when Ada needs a gentle confidant to talk about her relationship, considering if she tells her parents about her girlfriend, she’d be put on the streets immediately.

For someone whose work is thankless and unacknowledged, Sam left giant shoes in his wake. Steve has no chance filling them.

It takes all his willpower not to whip out his keys and zig-zag through traffic, all the way to the Avengers Tower in Manhattan. Not even a full day after being put on “mandatory vacation”—which is just Stark-speech for _take a fucking nap_ , as he later explained—he’s going mad. He’s been in his apartment for all of ten minutes and already he’s sick of seeing the same unchanging walls. His skin feels tight and itchy, sweat collecting around his collar.

 _I need to leave_ , he thinks, rushing to his room and dragging his suitcase from the closet. He repeats the thought like a mantra, messily shoving clothes into his baggage. _I need to leave, I need to leave, I need to leave._ The voice amplifies when his eyes stray towards their unmade bed— _sheets strewn everywhere, smelling of them after a morning tryst; lingering touches and eyes filled with childish mirth; unspoken words hanging on his tongue after riding the waves of his climax—_

“ _Damn_ _it_!” he roars, slamming the suitcase closed with so much force, Cap’n goes scrambling from the room. His voice rings through the apartment. It’s empty and cold, yet Steve’s sweating and gasping as if he’s on the brink of having a heat stroke.

A cold drink of water cools him down temporarily. It takes a few snacks to lure Cap’n from underneath the table, but otherwise, he’s fine. He sits on the kitchen floor in the dark, back against the cabinets and lap full of dog. Faintly, dancehall music seeps into his apartment from the one below.

It takes a half-hour for him to get his shit together long enough to actually get up and pack without cramming his clothes into his bag. But when he’s finally done, suitcase in one hand and Cap’n’s leash in the other, it’s like he can properly breathe for the first time.

[Б о л ь]

Petersburg, Virginia is a tangle of brick buildings and winding streets brimming with centuries of history right underneath the pavement. Despite being timeworn, there’s a charm Steve picks up the moment he passes the city line. It’s no wonder Sam melts right into the atmosphere whenever he’s here, like for once he’s able to shed his problems and just… _be_. Steve’s visited once before with him, right after S.H.I.E.L.D. crashed when Sam needed to wind down and recuperate with his family.

It’s a two-hour-thirty-minute drive from home so the sun’s already sinking by the time he arrives. It casts everything in an orange glow, making the town look picturesque like it was plucked straight from a dream. They don’t get sunsets like these in D.C. often. The sky’s too gray with smog and the city’s too busy to appreciate anything aside from light traffic.

Eventually, his fatigue catches up with him. He’s still got bullet wounds and stitches that need to be removed; deep-seated exhaustion and jetlag doesn’t make it any better. The drive here in Sam’s sedan (seeing he wasn’t gonna’ tote his dog and suitcase on a Harley, his boyfriend would fucking _kill_ him) damn near put him to sleep on the road. All he wants to do is tuck into a giant plate of food and hit the sack for another seventy years.

Steve’s a couple streets away from Darlene’s, seriously wishing he fashioned a better game plan than “get the fuck outta’ the house.” He should’ve prepared a speech or fuck, inform her that he was dropping by in case she was busy, but alas, this is yet another bullet on the list of stupid, impulsive shit he’s prone to doing. He chews his lip, letting his head drop to the steering wheel at a stoplight.

Usually he’s a sharp thinker, but it’s like someone stuffed his skull full of straw. Half-apologies and fragmented sentences bounce around in his brain, and he’s desperately trying to string together something that doesn’t sound like he’s reciting a eulogy.

_It was an op that went wrong, it wasn’t supposed—_

_I’m so sorry, Mrs. Wilson—_

_I just stood there and watched—_

_—find him as soon as possible, I swear. I’m gonna’ bring him home, no matter what—_

Either way, when he slowly pulls into Darlene’s driveway, he’s assed out. Truth is, there’s no proper way to tell a mother that her son’s been seized by terrorists and he couldn’t do shit to stop it. No amount of euphuisms and hangdog blathering can soften the blow.

“Damn it, Cap’n, what am I supposed to do?” he mumbles, throat tight. He casts a sidelong glance at the dog. Cap’n lolls his tongue out and salivates onto the seat in slow drips. After a moment, Steve sighs and opens the door.

Darlene’s home is in a quaint neighborhood, stashed behind a jungle of tropic plants and fruit trees in her lawn. The yard is overrun by vegetation but not neglected, seeing each shrub is green despite the winter chill. He has to walk halfway down the lane just to get a peek at the peach house through the low-hanging foliage.

 _“It’s a Caribbean thing,”_ Sam had explained without prompting the first time Steve gawked at the bold exterior. _“You know how many times the city complained about this shit, man? You’ll pry this color from her cold, dead hands—might as well get used to it now.”_

A breeze catches the smell of food wafting from an open window, stirring Steve’s palate in the first time in days. Cap’n perks up beside him, no longer nosing at a patch of grass but straining at his leash. He clearly isn’t the only one whose starving.

He’s so wracked with nerves, by the time he reaches the porch, he’s trembling. He raises a fist to the door, then drops it at his side. Takes in a deep breath. Clumsily raises it again. Flails at the last second—his knuckles barely brush the wood. Another shaky lungful of air.

He does this for three minutes.

Before it registers that he probably looks like a creep— _here’s this random white guy hovering around Darlene’s house with a one-eyed dog, shaking like he’s going through withdrawals_ —Cap’n takes the initiative and barks in deafening succession, and _wow_ he never knew his dog was such a little _shit_ —

Darlene swings the door open and Steve is ill with fright—face ashen, palms clammy and mouth agape with the world’s most devious pet chasing his ass on her porch. She stares in disbelief, eyes volley-balling up and down his form before recognition hits her and she beams. Her smile is bright and radiant, like the moon and the stars and the sun and Steve’s about to knock them all right out of the sky.

“Well if it ain’t the stranger!” Darlene whistles, ushering him inside. She’s lived in America for most of her life now, but she still has an islander accent mixed with that sweet Virginian twang. Her voice is unique and rich. “Why don’t you ever visit me, huh? You obviously know where I live. Gas ain’t that damn high and I _know_ that Stark man is cutting you a nice check.”

Steve chokes on his words, letting out some high-pitched gurgle. He covers with a cough and tries again. “’Been busy, y’know? Still cleaning up the mess from last year, and it’s kept me on my feet for a bit. I’ll try to visit more next time, yeah?” _If there is a next time_.

“You better not be lying to me, boy. It gets lonely around here sometimes, seeing my son obviously thinks he’s too good to visit now that he’s one of y’all.” She peers over Steve’s shoulder. “Speaking of, where’s he at now?”

Steve’s heart drops in his chest. His mouth is dry and sticky. _They deserve to know_ , he reminds himself as he works his jaw soundlessly. She _deserves to know_.

“ _Steve_!”

His only warnings are little pit-pats of naked feet across wood before he’s being pounced on by children. Their peals of laughter ring through the air as they chase each other in tight circles around Steve’s legs—tree trunks compared to their tiny bodies. Cap’n snorts and joins the pursuit with a start, knotting the leash around his ankles.

“Jody! _Aubrey_! Didn’t a’ tell you two to stop all’at _damn_ running in my house?”

“Steve’s here!” Jody squeals, fluffy braids bouncing as she jumps in place. Aubrey, just an inch shorter than his sister, clings to Steve’s legs.

“Can you pick us up? At the same time? Uncle Sam said you were like _weally, weally_ strong. Pretty please?”

“With a cherry on top?” she finishes in an even squeakier, more cloying tone. Beholden for a distraction, Steve scoops them both into his arms and raises them above his head. Darlene, even though irritated, isn’t immune to the imbuing delight of kids. She shakes her head and returns to the kitchen.

“How’d you get so _strong_?” Aubrey asks the moment his feet touch the floor again.

“Uncle Sam told me he cheated!” Turns out Jody’s just as bad as a whisperer as her uncle. And twice the gossip. Aubrey claps a hand over his mouth, scandalized.

“You _cheated_?”

“He _did_!”

Predictably, those two turn out to be a puckish duo. Partners in crime as they double team him, asking increasingly absurd and cockamamie questions for half an hour straight. Steve takes a seat on the sofa before his legs quit on him from standing so long.

“You know Iron Man?”

"Did you ever fight the Incredible Hulk?”

“Did you _win_?”

“Yeah, did’ja _win_?”

“I bet Thor could whoop the Hulk, you think?”

“ _Duh_ , you big dummy, Thor could whoop anybody on that team!”

“Is that _true_ Steve, huh? Could Thor whoop your behind?”

Jody inconspicuously looks Steve up and down before side-eyeing her brother.

“Thor could _definitely_ whoop Steve’s behind.”

Well, there goes his self-esteem.

The front door swings open. Cap’n yips and barks as Sam’s sister walks in, toting an armful of groceries into the kitchen. Being the gentleman he is (and needing an excuse to leave before the twins inevitably ask why Sam isn’t dating Thor instead), Steve walks over to help with the load.

“Evening, Sarah,” he starts, reaching for a bag. Sarah’s eyes widen comically as she yanks the bag out of reach.

“ _You’re_ here?”

Well, there goes his self-esteem. Again.

“Manners, Sarah!” Darlene chastises, tip-toeing to kiss her daughter on the temple. “Don’t get mad at him because he’s the only one’a y’all that wants to stop by.”

“Sorry, he just…just caught me by surprise.” She doesn’t face him as she speaks.

From then on, there’s a strained atmosphere. He’s drawn tight like a string, twiddling his thumbs and religiously checking his phone to keep the restlessness at bay. Once welcome, he feels like an intruder loitering in the house and the only thing keeping him there is Darlene’s acquiescence. Even the twins, as excited and garrulous as they are, now walk circles around him.

Sam had clearly taken after Darlene in both appearance and easy nature, so Steve’s left to assume Sarah’s a reflection of their late father. Steve’s never met Sarah face-to-face, but he’s heard lots of stories from his boyfriend. She’s a no-nonsense, no-mercy, never-back-down-from-a-fight type of person. The Overprotective Older Sister™ to a fault. Sam told him that once, after a high school fling led him on and ditched him on prom day, Sarah busted the girl’s car window with a bat that same night.

Sam said she’s calmed down since then, but still. Point taken.

He gets the wild suspicion she doesn’t like him. His head is not jammed up his ass enough to believe that anyone that doesn’t worship the ground he walks on is a naysayer, but there’s this quiet, disciplined rage in her that he can’t place.

The uneasy air persists through dinner, which is delicious, may he add. Darlene’s whipped up rice and légume (a flavorful, thick vegetable stew mixed with chunks of beef and spicy enough that he keeps his glass of water filled), but he can’t even enjoy it. There’s too many things rattling around in his head.

Jody and Aubrey play video games on Steve's phone. Darlene and Sarah conversate quietly in fast-paced creole. Cap’n’s settled down underneath the table, waiting for bits of food to drop like a scavenger. Steve would toss him a chunk of beef if a) it wouldn’t burn a hole through his dog’s stomach and b) there wasn’t a perfectly good bowl waiting by the door for him.

“So, Steve,” Sarah begins. Steve swallows the food in his mouth. It goes down like cotton. “How’s work been?”

Small talk. He can do small talk.

“Stressful, as usual, but you can’t really expect much when you’re working with Stark. Otherwise, it’s fine.” He’ll probably be the only guy in history to talk about superhero work the same way people discuss blue collar jobs. “And what about you?”

“I can pretty much say the same. It’s not an easy job on the EMT, but it’s rewarding. ‘Makes you really understand that every second counts—appreciate what you have every day.” There’s a faraway look in her eyes.

Unexpectedly, Sarah’s questions don’t stop there. She asks more about work. She asks about the dog. She asks how he enjoys the food. She asks about mundane things while carefully circumventing the most obvious question—where the hell is Sam?

By the time everyone’s finished, it’s almost nine. Darlene decides to retire for the night, and the children are tuckered out and practically asleep at the table. He offers to wash the dishes, which gives him enough time to beat himself up over the multitude of windows he missed to deliver the news.

Kicking problems into the high grass is the same defense mechanism that blew up in his face months ago. Still, he keeps his mouth shut, nods and smiles when Darlene propositions him a room for the night instead of the nearest motel. When he finishes scrubbing the last pot so clean he can see his reflection, it feels like there’s a stone lodged in his throat.

Sam's old room is a copy-and-paste of every typical boy’s room from the movies. Almost aggressively male with its dark blue walls and even darker trims, an assortment of jerseys and old high school sports gear in every corner. It's disorienting—like his room was suspended in the late 90s and he’s getting an unsanctioned eyeful of Sam’s childhood.

His countertop is the battleground for an entire army of GI Joes and an assortment of action figures. At the head of the line, the entire Howling Commandos collection pose dramatically. None of the dolls look remotely like his past friends—the Captain America doll looks like Rush Limbaugh with a blond toupee—but he bet it cost a pretty penny for the whole set. That didn’t stop young Sam from breaking the shield off Steve's hand and gluing it to Gabe's, though.

(He had taste, Steve can give him that.)

Every wall is covered with something; from cheesy, overedited posters to torn news articles on athletes. There’s a retro _Star Wars: The Phantom Menace_ print framed above his bed. Steve cracks a solemn smile, a quiet joke. There’s even yellowed post-it-notes tacked to his wall in sloppy handwriting.

 _Ask Alisha out to prom. Don't be a pussy this time_ , one says.

_Do Mrs. Underwood's science project or mom's going to kick your ass._

_Put money in the jar—Star Wars comes out this Friday._

He drops his duffle bag on the ground and lies on the bed, kicking his shoes off and letting his toes breathe. Cap’n yawns and settles down on the worn rug. But ever ill-behaved, it’s only a matter of seconds before he’s trying to crawl underneath the bed.

“Hey—you. Stop it.”

Cap’n grunts at him defiantly.

“So it’s like that?”

The dog just straight up ignores him, searching for something.

“Alright, party’s over.”

He drags Cap’n away, then checks under the bed. Steve’s learned to expect a lot of wild things, but he isn’t prepared for the embarrassing stack of _Playboys_ Cap’n unearthed. He stifles a roar of laughter with a knuckle in his mouth, flipping through the barely-nude women in swimsuits and heels. He even runs across a page that’s stuck together and _Jesus shit_ , when Sam gets home, Steve’s _never_ gonna’ let him live this down.

Uneventfully, the night wears on. Steve checks his messages and asks for the millionth progress update. He hasn't gotten an answer since this morning. The Avengers are either in another meeting or Tony's got him blocked.

Probably both.

He dozes off with his phone clutched in his hand.

[Б о л ь]

Cold water. A flash of blinding white. Exhaust. The black water splits beneath him. He’s helpless to stop his rapid descent into the current. He can’t keep himself afloat. His eyes sting. His mouth is chockfull of salt. It’s _cold_.

Steve shoots upright, gasping and sputtering, comforter twisted between his fingers. His body is slicked with sweat; the bed is soaked with it. Hair clinging to his forehead and the nape of his neck, he daubs at the moisture with his shirt. Steve checks the time. It’s three in the morning.

Sleep is a lost cause at this point, so he rises and splashes tepid water on his face in the joint bathroom. A streak of harsh, fluorescent light cuts into the darkness. The restless, incessant urge to do _something_ blindsides him; he’s cramming his legs into a pair of sweats and out the door in record time.

He starts off at a brisk jog that morphs into a full-on sprint around backstreets and neighborhoods. His shoes hit the pavement in fleeting spurts. For a fraction of a second, he wonders if he can outrun his demons—just keep going and _going_ and never stop until his regrets no longer hang over his shoulder like a silent wraith.

He runs until he can’t anymore, muscles twitching and begging for a break at a stop sign. He killed two hours hoping that he’d exhaust himself enough to actually fall asleep, but he was better off banging his head against a wall until he knocked himself unconscious.

A sensation materializes from nothing, but it seizes his body with tension so acute, it’s like he’s inhaling octane and someone just struck a match. Mechanically, he pulls into a fighting stance. Keen eyes track any motion in the color-bleeding half-light. Yet, the neighborhood is deathly still. Soundless.

The sensation is a metaphorical dog whistle; he knows it’s there—whatever the fuck _it_ is, in this case—but it’s operating on a pitch a shade too low and indistinct so it _just_ skirts his radar. It’s maddening being so on edge about some adversary that may just an amalgamation of PTSD and paranoia, but he supposes it’s his fault for not taking up those counselors Tony’s blatantly suggested several times before.

Steve _feels_ it. He _knows_ it’s there. Those invisible eyes burning holes into his skin from an unseen location—an elusive phantom just outside his peripheral. However, once he reaches the fifth minute of inaction, he mills through a list of local therapists in his head.

It’s still dark outside when he makes the cautious journey back to Darlene’s home, predictably. However, he _is_ surprised at Sarah’s presence on the porch. Fumes from her cigarette drift and twirl in the cold air. The butt is a beacon of light in the unwavering darkness.

“Bad weather, huh? ‘Been down in Virginia a couple times in the past and I’ve never seen a decent winter here.” Steve starts coolly, hoping the overcast hides the budding sunlight enough that he doesn’t appear as indisposed as he feels. He stands for a nerve-wracking minute waiting for a response, watching her methodically take a drag from her smoke, exhale, then sip at a solo cup of gin. She seems gaunt and blue in the odd lighting, but the cigarette puts fire in her eyes.

“You’re a real shit liar, y’know that?” Sarah says, snuffing the cig out. She flicks it into the grass somewhere and finishes her liquor in a swallow. “’Thought that someone who calls himself ‘Captain America’ would take after the name and be better at lying to black folk, but here we are.”

His heart pounds in his chest. His veins flood with ice, fingers and toes going numb with shock. _She knows, she knows, she knows_ , a voice screams in his head, growing more shrill and hysterical under Sarah’s stony gaze. Her stare strips him bare, peels back layers of gravitas and grandstanding until he’s that scared, skinny boy from Brooklyn all over again. There’s no way she _could_ know, at least not everything—not the details, not the excuses, not the apologies—but it’s that familial intuition that parses the only noteworthy datum of his visit: Sam is _gone_ and he has no _idea_ when he’s coming back.

“I didn’t realize it at first, when you came here without him. Yeah, it was weird, but I thought maybe he was sick! M-maybe he didn’t feel like making the drive! Maybe _this_ , maybe _that_ until I called him.” The plastic cup crushes in her fist, eyes glistening with fury and hurt and tears. She swallows thickly. “I fucking _called_ him and he _didn’t_ pick up. E-ever since the first time he tried to—the first time he—“ She swallows again. “Sam always picks up the phone for me. It’s been _five years_ since it happened and _every single time_ I called he answered me, god damn it! Then _you_ just pop up out of the blue, hand-wringing and sad ‘n shit like I can’t put _two-and-two together_ —“

“I’m so sorry—“

“I don’t _want_ your apology!” she hisses sharply, voice slicing through the still neighborhood. “I want to know what the _hell_ happened to my brother. He dead, is that it? Huh? Is he _dead_?”

“No, _no_ —he’s _alive_.”

(He violently rebukes the notion that Tony was wrong all along—that Sam’s gooey corpse is just floating in Lake Namtso, flesh dissolving in saline water and becoming a snack for passing fish, good _God_ —)

“Then _where_ is he?”

“They got him. Took him from me— _us_.”

“They?”

“Hydra.” he scrubs his hands over his face, knowing its red from anger and shame. “We got ambushed at a base in Tibet.”

“He said you guys were _done_ with that shit.”

“We were—we went months without a peep from Hydra until we got some random pointer that put us back in. We get there and turns out it’s an ambush—four of us against too many of them. I lost him on the battlefield while escaping. By the time we found him again, they’d shot him right out of the air before our eyes and—“ he chokes on his words. “And we couldn’t go back for him. I said we wouldn’t leave Sam behind but we had no _choice_.”

“But Hydra did. Go back for him, I mean.”

“Yeah. They did.”

Sarah staggers backward and flops limbless onto the porch swing, the rusty metal groaning under her weight. Steve searches her face (much like Sam’s, but somehow sadder like she was never born to smile) and awaits a backlash. He expects her to start sobbing or screaming or forcing him off the property because he’s fucking _worthless_ , absolutely _useless_ , but she doesn’t do any of that. She just sits there, stupefied and abstracted, and Steve would’ve preferred any reaction over this—the soul-sucking inertia _he_ instilled within her.

It’s an eternity before her stare holds any life behind it. Dark eyes slide over to Steve, cool and paring.

“I have to tell my mom,” she says in a deadened tone. If Steve thought he ruined Sarah with this news, he can’t even imagine what it’d do to Darlene. Oh sweet, open-handed Darlene whose affection and warmth is as encompassing as the midday sun. “She deserves to know what happened, but I can’t tell her everything.”

Steve’s breath catches in his throat, confusion coloring his face.

“I’m not doing this for you. Don’t mistake this as a friendly favor.” Sarah digs around in her robe for another cigarette, putting the stick to her lip and lighting it in the same practiced motion. “I hate lying to my mom, but if I tell her the truth it’ll kill her. She’d die of grief and have a heart attack in her sleep, if not as soon as the word gets out, and I can’t…I can’t have that on my hands. I can’t do that to her. So here’s what’s gonna’ happen,” she draws in a lungful of smoke, holding it a suspenseful few seconds before exhaling through her nose. “I’ll make a story up—say Sam ran away or some shit that doesn’t involve my brother being held hostage by white supremacists. She’ll be sad and worried, but she won’t...” she waves her hand dismissively, as if to shoo the thought away.

“I’ve got terms and conditions, though. If you don’t follow through, I’ll let _you_ be the reason why my mom can’t find the will to get up every morning after today. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“First thing’s first, I want an update on every little progress from here on out. I don’t give a damn if it’s something as small as finding a strand of hair where it doesn’t belong, I want to be alerted the _second_ you figure it out. And don’t try to pull that ‘classified’ superhero bullshit with me either—this is my _brother_. I _deserve_ to know.”

“Second, I want this case public—I want the whole _nation_ to know that Sam’s missing. Too many black people go missing in the middle of the night and nobody bats an eye about it, so I’ll be _damned_ if you think I’m gonna’ let my brother be a part of that group. I want his face on every channel; I want his name on every newspaper from here to California. If _TIMES_ can write a news breaking front-page story every time Iron Man takes a shit, they can do the same for Sam.”

Sarah slowly rises, bare feet dragging against the wooden porch as she moves to stand before him. Sarah is several inches shorter than him, yet he feels small under her scrutiny. Wind blows between them, howling through the empty streets in a lonesome whistle.

“You need to find my brother. And I would say I don’t give a fuck how long it takes, but I _do_. I want him home as soon as possible, I want him _safe_. Promise me you’ll get him back— _promise_ me so I’ve got something to believe in.”

Steve nods grimly, the weight of her pleaded words balancing on his shoulder like bricks.

“I promise.”

[Б о л ь]

Despite Sarah’s white lies, Steve doesn’t expect to be on cordial terms with any of the Wilson’s (and their extended family) afterward. In some corner of Steve’s mind, he recognizes what happened in Tibet wasn’t his fault (rather a rapid succession of increasingly unfortunate events, completely independent of his control) but he’s the harbinger of bad news, the only face Sam’s family has to tie with this affliction. If “Captain America” and “Steve Rogers” held no stature to them before, then it _definitely_ doesn’t now.

Needless to say, he’s shocked when Darlene asks for his aid gardening several hours later.

He trudges behind Darlene’s wiry frame, boots crunching in the frost-touched grass. Darlene lacks her usual brightness, her shoulders slumped and trapped in a grim silence as she clears the backyard, but she’s not crippled with grief. There’s still power flowing through her grip on her machete, the way she strides with a purpose, and that’s all that Steve can ask of her.

They’ve been hacking, weeding, fertilizing and every other _-ing_ in silence for almost three hours now. Steve’s a city boy through-and-through; he figures he’d have a black thumb if he ever picked up landscaping as hobby. He can’t count how many times on his gloved fingers that he’s mistaken some other plant for a weed and yanked the thing right out the ground, to Darlene’s horror. He’s trampled over entire beds of vegetables and drowned her cilantro. Like a bumbling numbskull, he tripped on a vine and landed ass-first into an unsuspecting patch of yams. If Darlene’s garden survived Hurricane Steve, it’s a true testament to her skill.

“You see that tree right there? The mango tree?” she says while they’re ankle-deep in some foul-smelling manure, pointing in a direction. It takes Steve a second to decipher one fruit-bearing plant from the next without a practiced gardener’s eye. “Paul and Sam grew that way back in ’93. Big as hell, ‘innit?”

Steve cranes his neck to fully embrace the girth of the tree. With thick, twisting roots, a behemoth of a trunk and spindly branches reaching out like arms, the tree towers above the house. Waxy foliage shine in the sunlight, seemingly beaming back at the clouds. When the wind blows, the foliage whispers secrets and tales only Paul and Sam know. The tree is thrumming with life, but not just in the physical sense. From Darlene’s wistful look, she’s aware, too.

“ _Madam Francis_ ,” she whistles in creole, rubbing the trunk appreciatingly. “This thing used to crank out mangoes like a _machine_. Every spring Sam and Paul would climb up and down this tree like some knuckleheads, picking the fruit and selling them on the side of the street like we still livin’ in _Port au Prince_. Y’know how much trouble those two got up to with this damn tree? The hospital bills from breaking their legs all the time almost ran me out a _home_ , Steve.”

Darlene’s body drains of short-lived zest as the past strips away from her, now standing in the bleak present. “After Paul passed away, I ain’t seen a single mango grow on this tree since. Sam tried to get the mangoes to start growing again, but he gave up after a year. Everybody knew it was a lost cause, but I took my ass out here, come hell or high water, and took care of this tree like it was my own child.”

She trudges around the wide trunk, ducks underneath a branch and stops in her tracks.

“It’s been twenty-one years since this tree popped out any fruit, and I was dead sure I would never see another mango out here again,” she steps out of the way. “Until now.”

The fruit is so heavy and swollen, the branch sags under the strain. The fruit has a lustrous coat, the bright orangish-yellow color standing out like a sore thumb against the dark foliage. Unfortunately, it is seemingly the only one. Steve opens his mouth to speak, but he can’t find the words to quite express what he’s feeling. Whatever it is. Darlene gently plucks the mango, cradling it like it’s the most delicate thing she’s ever held.

“I know I probably sound like a crazy old lady, rambling on about fruits and death while I’ve got you slaving out here in my backyard, but I believe there’s meaning behind happenings like these.” she runs a reverent thumb over the yellow skin. “This is about faith, Steve. I’ve been nurturing this tree for _twenty-one years_ , and all’uv’a sudden here comes this fruit blooming in the middle of winter, healthy as I’on’t know what.”

She pulls out a blade and poses to cut the fruit. Then she signs, drops her narrow shoulders and hands over the fruit and knife to him. He’s choked with the gravity of her action, the meaning not lost upon him.

“I want you to do it, Steve. Cut the fruit.”

And he does.

Horrified, he drops it.

Inside is black—the pit completely hollowed out and turned into a putrid nest for insects. Gnats, ticks and an assortment of others dead bugs fester in the middle. A swarm of ants spills out over the sides, enraged at the intrusion.

It was dead all along.

Darlene lets out a despondent cry before turning on her heel and darting back to the safety of her home.

[Б о л ь]

Reasonably, Steve hasn’t been out for drinks in a while. He can think of five reasons at the top of his head why he’s avoided bars like the plague—starting with his impeccable alcohol tolerance and ending with claustrophobia. Yet, when Sarah coolly asks if he’d join her at _BJ’s Bar and Grill_ , he can’t find it in him to decline. He’s not sure if this is an extended olive branch or she was just lonely enough to let him tag along.

 _BJ’s Bar and Grill_ is a relatively small alehouse, but that doesn’t stop it from swelling with people at eight o’ clock on a Thursday night. Although outside is below freezing, the bar is pleasantly warmed and smells of hard liquor and fried meat. Chatter fills the area. Somewhere, an entire table explodes in raucous laughter. An upbeat 80s hip-hop track plays lowly. Sarah thrums her fingers against her thigh to the beat.

The world moves on.

“Sarah! Long time no see, bitch. What dragged your uppity ass outta’ Chincoteague?” the bartender greeted, drying a cup with a rag, white teeth shining in a sly grin. She spared Steve a bored half-glance before turning her full attention to Sam’s sister.

“Same bullshit, as usual.”

“ _Still_?”

“Men are like roaches, Tee. You spray’em down and stomp on’em but they keep coming back.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, sis.”

Sarah and T play catchup for another minute before she orders two drinks, a shot of straight Hennessey for her and a finger of bourbon for him. When the atmosphere becomes a shade too humid, she shucks off her thick jacket and drapes it across the chair.

He should’ve put together the clues by now—being a master tactician warranted that he had an eye for details, but in his defense, he spent his stay wallowing in guilt and sorrow. He’s caught by surprise when the cold bar light shines off the dark bruises littering Sarah’s skin like ink blots. She’s wearing a t-shirt and a pair of long jeans, but he has an inkling that there’s more hiding underneath her clothes from the way she stiffly reseats herself. It explains her appearance in Petersburg despite living the same distance from Darlene as he does. Explains why Jody and Aubrey are home during the weekdays, idling their time away playing tag and chasing Cap’n around the yard. Explains why her eyes, though wide and brown, are blue.

Her ring-less finger drums against the smooth countertop, _tap, tap, tap_.

The conversation, or lack thereof, creates a stifling tension between the two; a tacit game of “who’s talking first” that neither wants to play. It’s so stiff even Tee busies herself tending to other patrons on the opposite side of the bar. Aside from Sam, he and Sarah have nothing in common. They’ve exhausted their menial chats over dinner a few days ago, and small talk seems transparent at this point.

“Who’s Alisha?”

Ah, yes. Starting a conversation about his missing boyfriend’s high school sweetheart—Tony once said he lacks finesse, but he apparently lacks _tact_ too. Surprisingly, Sarah’s eyebrows shoot up in interest and for the first time tonight, she sets her drink down.

“You talkin’ ‘bout dollar store Letoya Luckett?”

“Er—I guess? The one from high school. Sam’s ex.”

“They never dated,” she huffs with an amused smirk. “Sam sure as hell wished they did, though. What made you bring her up? Hope you ain’t feeling insecure about Alisha all’uv’a sudden; that romance _been_ dead and gone.”

“Nothing it’s just—he has a lot of sticky notes about her on his wall. I don’t know, I thought there was something there.”

“Maybe on his side, but that girl was a heartless lil’ bitch. When my brother crushes, he crushes hard. The moment he got to senior year, all he kept talking about was Alisha Baker. Alisha _this_ and Alisha _that_ and _what is Alisha doing this weekend_? _Do you think Alisha likes this sweater_?”

Steve cracks a smile.

“He sounded gone on her.”

“ _Everyone_ was gone on her. She was the only girl at Crimson Wave High with hips and thighs and it went straight to her head. It took him three weeks to ask her out to prom and she made an ass outta’ him by standing him up.”

“Then you stormed over to her house and bashed in her car window in the middle of the night, right?” This part he heard before. Sarah’s head tips back as she laughs.

“He told you all about that part, huh?”

“In great detail. That’s apparently the only thing that mattered that day for him.”

She grins wildly, a mischievous smirk that rivals Jody’s, as she furiously scrolls through her phone. A second later, she slides it over to him. On her screen is a photo of Sam in an ill-fitting penguin tux, baby-faced and cheesing like he won the lottery. He posed in front of an electric red motorcycle so shiny and polished it partially showed up white on the polaroid.

“Is that…?”

“A jerry curl? _Absolutely_. It wasn’t even in style back then but you couldn’t tell him _shit_ that day.”

“What about the ride?”

“1978 Electra-Glide Harley,” she recites instantly like she’s heard the model a million times. “It was my dad’s pride and joy and the only reason Sam ever picked up chicks. The thing’s trashed now, my Dad’s still probably rolling in his grave about it, but that’s fine by me.”

From then on, Sarah retells the greatest hits from Sam’s childhood. Jesus, Steve thought him and Bucky were a pair of rascals, but Sarah and Sam almost have them beat. He’s gotten into his fair share of back alley brawls, but what does that mean when the Wilson’s planned a chocolate heist on the nearest corner store at ten and twelve? Or the time where Sarah made a boy twice her size eat dirt for pushing her brother off the swing set? Or when Sam broke his arm (for the second time at age nine) jumping off the roof because a couple boys on the block double dog dared him to? Rashness always ran in Sam’s blood—Steve would be a self-centered blockhead to think his boyfriend’s reckless streak started and ended with him. His man’s an adrenaline junkie through-and-through.

“That’s why people look up to him, y’know?” Sarah sighs, coming off a laughing-high. She slumps against her chair, abs still stuttering from her latest fit. She looks lighter, somehow younger as if smiling smoothed out the frown lines on her face. Obviously, a tête-à-tête isn’t enough to cure her depression or miraculously make them friends, but it’s a start. Infinitely better than whatever tense acquaintance they had before.

“This is my brother we’re talking ‘bout here. Half the people in this city still remember him as a lil’ troublemaking jit, and now he’s out there in D.C. and Manhattan bumping elbows with billionaires and _superheroes_. Do you know when was the last time any black kid got to see something like this? Over sixty years ago—Gabe Jones.” her expression grows unhappy again, downcast as she swirls the empty glass around his fingertip.

“He’s hot shit ‘round these parts, but I’m well-aware his name doesn’t hold an eighth of the weight yours does. I can’t even remember how many times Sam’s sent me a picture where an article called him ‘Samson Wilkins’ or ‘the Raven.’ But people _care_ in Petersburg; the same way people care in Harlem and Queens and Detroit—they see themselves in my brother ‘cause he did the impossible and he’s _still_ doing it. He makes a living outta’ breaking boundaries.” Her bottom lip quivers, jaw trembling. “How am I supposed to tell a five-year-old kid that the only black superhero got abducted by Nazis, Steve? How am I supposed to hold that on my _shoulders_?”

She squeezes her eyes and clenches her fists until the moment passes; her eyelashes are wet and clumped. She signals for another drink with a weak wave. Steve helplessly watches her drown her sorrows in another glass of liquor.

“What did you tell Darlene?” Steve asks quietly, voice barely carrying through the noisy bar. The place is thinning out as the clock passes midnight and only the drunkest and loudest people remain. It’s a matter of time before _BJ’s Bar and Grill_ closes for the night.

“I said he was on the run from some villainous group ‘cause he shot the head honcho right in the dome.” she slurs, holding a finger-gun to her head and pulling the trigger. “’N that it’s not safe for him to stay in one spot or communicate or else they’d find him.” She laughs devoid of emotion. Her side smirk is empty. “It’s a stupid fucking lie.”

“If it gets the job done, it’s fine enough.”

“You must’ve had more to drink than I have.”

She reaches for the last few sips in her cup and Steve eases the glass away from her. She’s clearly done for the day; if they stay for another minute she’d probably drink the pub out of business.

“I’ve got this from here,” Tee groans from behind him, untying her apron with and taking up her resigned duty. “My shift’s already over and not even God himself can move her at this point.” It takes Tee a few minutes to convince Sarah to leave with her, but eventually Tee’s helping her half-stumble half-walk out the doors. Though, it’s a crying shame Steve forgot to ask for the keys before they left.

Single-minded as he is, it only takes a few seconds of sprawling loneliness before his mind shoots back to Sam. The floodgates burst open. His mind brims with intrusive thoughts, phantom voices whispering against the shell of his ear.

(It must be unhealthy, this tireless drive to fill in the Sam-shaped hole carved out of his life, but he’s helpless to stop it. It’s like Steve’s been swept into a violent current, head underwater, and he can’t _breathe_ until he sees him again. Until Sam’s hand breaks through the surface and breathes life back into him.)

Steve doesn’t want to think about the repercussions Sam’s stay with Hydra will inevitably create. Hydra’s not holding him hostage to paint each other’s nails and order pizza. By default, whatever plan they have for Sam is nefarious, but the utter dearth of knowledge about it is what makes his stomach _sick_ with fright.

 _Why_ did Sam appeal to Hydra? It can't be the wing pack—while its impressive technology, it's nothing compared to what they already have in their arsenal. It’s not Sam's skills either, since he, Nat and Clint are about equally matched, and at the time, Clint would’ve been the easiest target. It doesn’t make any fucking _sense_.

He breaks the glass in his hand. It doesn’t break quietly.

“Keep breaking shit and I’m kicking your ass out,” a bartender says gruffly, wiping the counter. Steve apologizes profusely and leaves more than enough money for the tip on his way out. The chilly northern air marginally drags him out of his panicked stupor. Cold air nips at his cheeks and gloveless fingers, but he just shoves them in his pocket and walks heavily towards Darlene’s house.

The route home requires him to cut through the rest of downtown. The streets are unsurprisingly barren on a freezing Thursday, the sidewalks deserted aside from an occasional straggler. Alone, cold and exhaustion that persists through any amount of sleep, the city appears dreary. Music from a passing longue spills into the streets, a vintage song with a weepy, maudlin vocalist. She sings about love and loss.

If Steve wasn’t a sad sack of shit before, he sure is now.

He’s crossing the street when it happens again. The tension. The whistle-sharp feeling of being watched. Immediately, he keys up, shoulders rising to his to his ears as he swings around in the middle of the crosswalk. There’s nothing there—nothing to see except the traffic lights as the switch from red to green then yellow and back again like clockwork.

Still, the feeling remains. Heightens. The world gears into an oversaturated, technicolor hellscape. The earth spins in hyperdrive. Colors blur together like he’s on a rollercoaster that won’t end and _fuck_ he’s going to throw up—

 _Pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat_.

Is that his heart? He raises a sweaty palm to his chest, feeling the muscle ram against his ribcage. Is it a leaky gutter filled with melting ice? He whips his head to the right. Is it someone following him home? He spins on his heel, but like last time, there’s no one to be found. No one to blame but himself and PTSD for feeling like he’s never left the battlefield.

Fucking hell.

[Б о л ь]

“Catch me if you can!” Jody squeals, scrambling up the slide. Her little boots slip against the plastic making it even easier for Steve to just pluck her up. Giggles bubble from Jody’s chest, and now that he has a reference, she laughs just like her mom. Little nose scrunched up, eyes squeezed shut, the widest and brightest smile on the side of the planet illuminating her face.

“That’s not fair!”

“You didn’t ask for a head start this time.” Steve hums, setting her down. She crosses her arms and stomps her foot so hard, mulch goes flying.

Darlene and Sarah have been gone all morning (he won’t admit to eavesdropping, but the word “divorce” was brought up often before they left), leaving Steve to babysit. It’s not a problem considering Steve likes kids. He obviously doesn’t have much experience babysitting, but if he can take out an entire elevator full of double-agents without breaking a sweat, he can take care of two high-spirited toddlers for a couple of hours. Even Cap’n’s been holding his weight for once, following Aubrey around and barking whenever he strayed too far away.

They’ve been at the local park for a little over an hour. There’s only a handful of equipment to use, yet the twins make the most of their time playing pretend. The last game, Jody was the princess of “Playgroundia”, Aubrey was her royal knight, Cap’n was an evil dragon and Steve was…Steve. Before that, the two were engaged in an intense game of “Hot Lava.” Not to mention the various hand-clapping games Jody tried (and failed) to teach Steve.

“I’m _starving_ ,” she whines after losing another round of tag.

“I want ice cream,” Aubrey adds. Cap’n licks his face ceaselessly as if he’s trying to bring warmth back to his round cheeks. Aubrey pushes the dog away with a small hand, but now Cap’n slobbering all over his fingers.

“Yeah, I want ice cream.”

“Can we get ice cream?”

“It’s _freezing_ outside.” Steve huffs in disbelief.

“ _So_?” they chorus, clearly not understanding the ramifications of eating a frozen stick of milk in the bitter cold. God, if he tried to pull something like that when he was a child, he would’ve caught a cold and then swiftly died of pneumonia.

Thank Christ for modern medicine.

“Okay—fine. We’ll go to the nearest parlor and I’ll get you two a scoop of whatever you like, yeah? Just don’t tell your mom.” He and Sarah may be on cordial speaking terms, but if he gets her children sick she’s probably gonna’ put him out of his misery. Jody suggests they pinky swear on it, which is a much more pleasant option than spit-swearing as Aubrey proposed.

Eager to get to the other end of the park, the twins race through the playground, Cap’n bounding right after them like a majestic ball of fur. Steve watches with growing alarm as Cap’n barrels into Jody’s legs, sending them both crashing into mulch. He jogs over just in time to catch the first few tears slipping down her face. She holds out her bleeding palm, sucking back a sob.

The cut isn’t that bad, just some dirt and a few shallow scrapes, but this is coming from the guy who’s been shot and stabbed more times than he remembers. Steve picks her up and puts her on his hip, making the walk to the bathroom much faster. Aubrey opts to wait outside with Cap’n, partaking in an impromptu round of fetch with a stick he just found. No matter, it shouldn’t take more than a minute anyway.

He gingerly rinses her palm with some soap and water in the sink. She frowns as he washes the dirt away, but the tears cease. Steve hand her a paper towel; she tippy-toes to throw it in the trash.

“Uncle Sam always kisses them better,” Jody mutters, grimacing as she stares at her palm in disdain—as if Steve just rubbed more dirt in her wound and his incompetence disappoints her. Steve plays the role, letting out a theatrical, woeful sigh as he crouches to her height.

“How could I _forget_?”

“I don’t know!” she squeaks in outrage. “That’s the most important part! ‘Helps me get better faster!”

She offers her palm and Steve presses a series of noisy, wet kisses to it. Her face bursts with a radiant beam, a gap right in the middle of her smile. It must run in the family.

(He wonders if Sam ever wanted this—the domestic thing. The married-with-kids shtick that middle-aged American can’t seem to have enough TV shows of. The lazy Saturdays that are sticky sweet and obscenely saccharine. That lifestyle’s been unfeasible for him; he spent most of his adulthood undesirable and ill or fighting a war. Sam on the other hand? He had a chance, before Steve came flying into his life like a wrecking ball with a cute smile.)

He doesn’t realize he’s zoned out until Cap’n distant barking finally processes. It’s strident and panicked. Steve scoops Jody up and busts open the bathroom door. He scans the playground with frantic eyes.

Cap’n’s leash is tied around the see-saw. Aubrey is nowhere to be seen.

A lone swing sways in the icy draft, it’s despondent screech ringing through an empty park.

“ _Aubrey_!” he shouts, throat constricted like his heart in trying to climb into his mouth. His chest heaves. Jody looks terrified.

“Where’s Aubrey?” she asks with a tremble. Her face is tight. The wrong words might set her off.

“Hide and go seek,” he lies, spitting out the first thing that comes to mind. “He’s playing hide-and-go-seek and we just have to find him.”

She doesn’t look convinced.

“But—but Aubrey’s _bad_ at hide ‘n go seek. He doesn’t know how to hide!” the crease between her eyebrows deepen. “ _Or_ seek! He hates that game!”

“Well, we’re gonna’ wait and see how long he can hold out, yeah? And afterward, we’ll pick up some ice cream.”

At the mention of ice cream, she relaxes some. He doesn’t think she’ll stop brooding until her brother is back within eyesight. Steve unties Cap’n, and he cowers behind Steve, whining and sniffling. Whatever he saw, whatever _put_ him there—it isn’t good.

Steve leaves no rock unturned. He checks every stall, walks the entire perimeter of the park before concluding that Aubrey’s not there. It takes all his strength to school his features underneath Jody’s vigilant scrutiny—a simple quirk of the lip could be enough to indicate something’s off.

He searches the block, pacing up and down sidewalks with urgency. He passes the library, Darlene’s house, the youth ministry. An elementary school. Another person walking their dog.

Minutes pass. It’s five ‘til he’s clocking an hour that Aubrey’s been missing.

He’s about to loop back around to retrace his path around the neighborhood when an idea strikes him. He picks up Cap’n in one arm, secures Jody in the other, then full on _sprints_ down the sidewalks. A few joggers gape at him, but the world blurs into nonexistence. He has tunnel vision and his sight is set on the nearest _Twisty Cone_.

He didn’t notice when he drove past it coming into Petersburg, but the parlor’s been retired for a least a couple of years. The paint is splotchy and peeling. The windows are boarded up. There’s a raccoon eyeing him vehemently from the roof. The parking lot is tiny and void of cars, closed in by overgrown shrubbery and wild trees.

Steve’s chest heaves, dread twisting his stomach into knots.

It’s like Aubrey vanished in thin air.

Jody wiggles out of his slackened hold and lands hard on the gravel. Steve isn’t given enough time to react—she’s scurrying towards the abandoned establishment before he can shake his nonplus.

“Jody, wait!”

She careens around the side of the building. Steve chases her, hot on her trail. There’s a door. The busted lock makes it easier to swing open and reveal—

“I did it!” Jody chirrups, jumping in place. “I _found_ you! Ha!”

Steve nearly collapses in relief, legs wobbly and knees weak as he leans against the splintered doorframe. A bead of sweat rolls from his forehead, down his jaw and drops off his chin. But Aubrey isn’t responding to either of them. He just stands there with his back to Steve, stock-still like a wax figure.

Steve places a gentle hand on his shoulder. Aubrey jerks underneath his touch, but finally faces him.

“H-he told me to give you this,” Aubrey whispers in a trembling voice, sounding on the verge of tears. Steve’s face contorts in horror.

A single plate from Sam’s wings sits heavily in Aubrey’s hands. A crooked ‘S’ is scratched into the metal, the grooves deep and clean like it was done with a scalpel.

[Б о л ь]

Steve’s a threat.

It occurs to him when he puts the household on lockdown for the rest of the day. It congeals when he rifles through his suitcase for his Steyr M1912, packed meticulously under boxers, socks, and polos. It becomes a verity when he passes the fear-stricken family, huddled in the dark with the power off so the house appeared vacant.

He thought he was going _insane_. That the bottomless pit of repressed memories sprung a leak and was bleeding him dry with phantasms, but no. His notional foe isn’t the ghosts of his past forcing reality into a chokehold— _no_ , _no_ , _no_. It— _he_ is real. He is real and he’s been hunting Steve down like a beast. He is real and used a _five-year-old_ to deliver a piece of his missing boyfriend’s equipment (which was abandoned in _Tibet_ and somehow made the journey to Virginia) as some indistinct threat.

His jaw sets. He tastes copper on his tongue.

It’s one in the morning; the Wilson’s are asleep. Steve refuses to follow suit. He can’t leave the house exposed while a Hydra agent or _whoever the fuck_ lurks somewhere nearby. He promised that to Sarah—she wouldn’t let her head touch the pillow until she knew her children were safe while she rested. He’s already talked to Tony about getting someone to watch over Darlene’s house. Hopefully, they’ll have something arranged by tomorrow morning.

A deep, rattling cough startles him. He briefly fears that the house was infiltrated while he was distracted, however, relaxes a fraction once he recognizes Darlene. But the coughing and hacking continue, growing more violent and phlegmy as the moment passes. He abandons his post and rushes to her room.

Darlene’s face-down in her bed, nearly smothered by her pillows. Steve risks it and flips on the room light so he can properly aid her—assailant be damned. He helps her sit upright to ease her respiratory passageway, but the coughing doesn’t stop. Hell, she looks _swollen_ , limbs puffy and skin dry.

She weakly points to her nightstand and sloppily signs for ‘pills’, but Steve gets the message. He rummages through stacks of paper until he comes across two bottles. He pops the caps open and Darlene desperately chokes down two of each dry. It takes a minute, but eventually, her coughing dies down.

She looks worn like she’s been dragged through hell and back. Her face is slick with sweat, dry lips parted and sucking in air. Her eyes flutter shut.

He stoops to pick up a sheet he dropped on the floor. Steve tries not to be invasive, but his eyes run over the text anyway. He’s not familiar with most medical terms, nonetheless, the phrase “cardiac tumor” and “angiosarcoma heart” makes fear and shock burn hot in his chest like a wildfire. His face is ashen, completely bereft of color, and he looks like a specter standing in the center of her room.

“Mrs. Wilson…” he starts, but he doesn’t know where to go from there. Doesn’t know what to say. He’s never been particularly good with words; all his thoughts—the absolute _bedlam_ of thoughts ringing around in his head right now—get lost in translation somewhere between his brain and his mouth. The words die on his tongue.

“Life ain’t been too kind to me, Rogers,” she rasps, staring at her swollen fingers like they’re foreign. “I been through a lotta’ shit in my time but this one…this one’s different. ‘Found myself in the unfortunate point-twenty-five percent of people who catch heart cancer, but sometimes you just gotta’ roll with the punches.”

“I can pay for it,” he blurts before he can even process what he’s saying. “The treatment, I mean. I have more than enough money just sitting around collecting dust, and I know people—I have _connections_ —“

He’s startled into silence by her deep, robust laughter. It rises from her chest, heady like aged wine and still lovely to the ear despite her recent paroxysm. She smiles, but it’s not mirthless. It’s not bitter. She smiles with a kind of acceptance that only comes from somebody who knew they were dying for a while.

“I appreciate the offer, I do—it shows how caring you are to be willing to pay for all of _this_ , but it’s the treatment from the _last_ cancer that put me in this mess to begin with. ‘Doctor told me these things ain’t naturally occurring, it’s all that radio-whatever that started shaking things up inside. Plus,” she hums, running her fingers through her dark curls. “My hair looks _far_ too nice to possibly leave this world shiny and bald, baby. I ain’t gonna’ be _buried_ with no _wig_ , and you can put _that_ on my husband’s grave.”

Steve cracks a mournful half-smile, but it fades quickly.

“There are other options,” he attempts, even though it’s clear she’s made her decision. “Stark created an entirely new heart by himself, he can do something similar for you, I’m sure.”

“What, so I can walk around with a mechanical time bomb in my chest?” she says indignantly, but her eyes sparkle with amusement. Steve purses his lips together. A yawning hush envelops the house.

“So, this is it?”

“Like Michael Jackson.”

“Does anybody else know?”

“Sarah ‘n that’s about it. If I tell anybody else in this family, they’ll already be making funeral arrangements and tryna’ get their name on my will.”

A pause.

“How long—how many…”

“A couple months, give or take. ‘Doc thinks I won’t even make it past summer,” she leans over like she’s telling Steve a secret. “But I’ll tell you what, Steve; I’ll promise not to die until my boy gets back home, alright? Then I can go happily. Sounds good to you?”

Steve nods dumbly before his words return.

“I’ll find him before then—I’ll get him back for you. For us.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lemme get sentimental with you guys real kwick...  
> the amount positive and enthusiastic response i've gotten for this story is literally like...astounding. when i first came up with this idea i already had it in my mind nobody was gonna give shit bc a) it focuses on a black character and b) this idea is kinda left-field. i wasn't even gonna write this damn thing initially. and when i posted it i was 100% sure i would be getting maybe one or two comments on each chapter at best. but like srsly thank you guys for showing me that y'all are interested in the shit i write when 90% of the world pays black female writers dust for the shit we do  
> -tla  
> note: i will get to all of the comments you guys left me! y'all are not being ignored, i swear <3


	7. w i l t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warnings: domestic abuse, mentions of gore, anti-black slur

**vii**

**w i l t**

[в я н у т ь]

MARCH 3RD, 2015

 _Whenever Tony Stark makes an announcement, everyone skids to a stop and waits with abated breath._ Billionaire, philanthropist, engineer—Steve’s heard the occupation recap at least twice a week since joining the Avengers. Still, he forgets the inordinate sway Stark has on the western world outside of being the media’s favorite playboy. His legal endeavors are questionable at best, yet, he, Rhodey and his militia of lawyers get shit done—and efficiently, at that. Steve never received full disclosure about the government’s plan to handle the Winter Soldier, however, Tony’s involvement birthed some backdoor accords he could only access on a third-party website. No doubt Tony exploited America’s flawed justice system with loopholes and bribery, but the fact stands: Stark is a man with more clout than one person should hold.

So, when Steve decides to make Sam’s disappearance public, Tony is the right man to go to.

It doesn’t take much to gather press when it comes to the Avengers. All Tony does is tip a few major news networks that he’s going to make an announcement at 6 PM sharp, and a thick crowd already condenses around the tower three hours in advance.

Although he isn’t making the statement, Steve’s nervous; his stomach riots and the breakfast he ate earlier is about to make an untimely reappearance. He peers down at the horde of press, looking like swarming insects from the twelfth-floor. His breath fogs up the window.

“If you keep getting your fingerprints on my glass, I’m gonna’ throw you out of it,” Tony’s voice startles Steve out of his anxious reverie. He strolls fully into the room, tinkering with a wrist-watch that could probably pay for his grandkids’ retirement. He’s finely dressed, as usual, with a velvety red tie and black suit from some swanky French brand Steve can’t remember nor pronounce.

“Came up here to pick on me?” he half-jokes, but he’s lacking humor.

“Nat does that well enough by herself, thank you, she doesn’t need any help.” Tony leans against one of the many luxury sofas in the living area, crossing his arms in a manner that means whatever conversation they’re about to engage in will be unpleasant. “So, about Wilson,”

Steve raises an eyebrow. Tony continues with a sigh.

“I’m pretty sure you had your whole ‘Intro to the 21st Century 101’ by now, am I right? Y’know—learned about the gift of TV with color and cute videos of cats playing the piano and _all_ the joyous wonders of modern technology, but _you_ —“ he wags a finger accusingly at Steve. “Don’t know the Internet. The _real_ Internet.”

“The real Internet,” he parrots back incredulously.

“Yes—the _real_ Internet. The one that’s filled with trolls and low-life neckbeards that park their ass on their computer all day and play Call of Duty. _Or_ circle jerk to white nationalist memorabilia and cartoon tentacle porn on public forums. Essentially, they’re the same group of people, _but_ the point is: The Internet is crawling with scumbags.”

“I don’t understand what this has to do with Sam.”

“Wilson’s a private man, Rogers; the guy doesn’t even have a _Facebook_. Most of the media don't know anything about him except for being the dude with wings—I think he’s kept it that way so long on _purpose_.” He waves at the window Steve was just looking through. “Now there’s a complete press shit storm outside of my home. Once the news gets a load of what happened to your boyfriend, they’re gonna’ go ballistic. They’re vultures—there’s no part of Sam’s life that they’re not gonna’ try to get their grubby hands on. Hell, some outlets have been ready to tear him to the ground the moment word spread that he joined our little club. There’s a FOX News van out there somewhere, and they’re gonna’ have a _field_ _day_ trying to spin this story to prove why there doesn’t need to be any more black superheroes in the Avengers.

“ _Then_ you realize that the Internet is not all fun and games and those trolls suddenly find something better to do than bully kids online. Something better to do like harassing Wilson’s family on social media. Stalking them. Sending in death threats and calling them slurs I won’t even _know_ exists.” Tony fixes him with a hard stare, mouth set in a grim line. “I’m not questioning your decision to go public about this. I understand. I support it. But it’s about to get ugly, Steve. And if— _when_ we get your man back, I don’t know how he’s going to deal with it.”

A silence follows, heavy and somber. Steve’s fist curls by his side.

“I ran Wilson’s wing-plate through the scanner. Several times. With many different software.” The sudden change in conversation is obvious, but appreciated.

“I’m guessing you didn’t find anything.”

“You’d be correct! Whoever gave this to you wasn’t dicking around. I’m not picking up any DNA that isn’t yours or Sarah’s kid’s.” Tony hums thoughtfully. Creases form between his brows. “This is pretty _subtle_ for Hydra. I’m not sure what message stealing children from parks to deliver scrap metal they’ve done arts and crafts on is supposed to send. They’re usually more overt with their threats.”

“So you’re saying this isn’t Hydra?”

“I’m not saying _anything_. I just think this roundabout threat—if you can even _call_ it that—is completely out of character for, you know. _Terrorists_. Either way, the piece is useless to the investigation. If you want it back, you can have it.”

“I—yeah. Yeah, I would like that.” Tony departs soon after. Probably off the quell his nerves with a crystal shot glass and liquor so wildly expensive it sucks the joy out of being buzzed.

Steve texts Sarah to pass the time. There’s still not much in common between them, but having Sam as their middle ground remains enough to spawn regular conversations. They avoid all the sad stuff like the plague. Never talk about the weeks of complete inactivity on the case. Never mention Sarah’s husband or home life. It’s the status quo.

Natasha pops in at a point. She’s dressed down in a pair of sweats, fiery hair tied into a bun at the top of her head. She sprawls on the sofa with a protein shake in hand and slurps noisily for the duration of her stay. They don’t talk. Don’t even greet each other or make eye contact as she passes him. They just let some Russian TV drama fill the silence, volume blasting so loud his ears ring.

Steve wants to apologize. After all, a few hours after discovering Clint and Nat’s secreted relationship, he weaponized it and used it against her. It was a dick move. Yet, the apology won’t form on his tongue. He thinks about what to say until the program ends and she slips away again, right through his fingers.

The clock strikes six. The TV’s playing whichever news station Steve landed on first. The ridiculously high definition does the jittery anchor no favors, his sweatiness and dishevelment emphasized by the flat screen. Steve’s curled on the couch, legs drawn up tight like he’s still small enough to get away with it.

The crowd earlier is nothing compared to the one gathered underneath the Manhattan sunset now. The mass is no longer contained by Stark’s property and now spills into the streets, effectively halting traffic. Curious bystanders gather around the perimeter to observe the fanfare. Police cars circle the crowd lest anyone gets rowdy or violent and direct traffic around the affair.

In an anticlimactic turn of events, it only takes five minutes for Tony to deliver his speech. Of course, not including the fifteen needed to wrangle the crowd’s excited roars into a manageable chatter. Tony kept his announcement tight, probably the briefest Steve’s ever heard in his life, and vague. Just enough information for the press to grasp the severity of Sam’s disappearance without leaking the utter desperation exuding from the team.

 _“…and it is with a heavy heart that I announce that Sam Wilson, the Falcon, has disappeared.”_ Steve snorts cheerlessly. ‘Disappeared.’ It’s a more public-friendly replacement for ‘abducted.’ ‘Makes it seem like some cosmic force whisked Sam away into the great beyond rather than a fleet of vengeful extremists. _“The Avengers and I are doing everything in our power to return our teammate back to us—back_ home _—as swiftly as possible. However, until then, we ask that you keep Wilson and his family in your minds and hearts.”_

Tony’s speech doesn’t stop replaying. It’s captured in every angle from seemingly every camera in New York. It runs so many times, he memorizes the words within thirty minutes. After an hour, the clip’s burned in his memory like film in a darkroom.

Across the board, there’s nothing but scorn from the outlets, a lick of sympathy yet to be found. They wanted _real_ breaking news. They wanted _substance_. They wanted Stark to play his role as the media cash cow and announce some dicey tech or risqué scandal that would have viewers scrambling to their network for the latest scoop.

Sam’s once said that nobody would give a shit about him _‘unless I’m dead or they’re carrying my black ass straight to prison.’_ Steve was incredulous then—didn’t quite believe a nation that pats itself on the back in the name of ‘progress’ could wholeheartedly disregard someone as unique as Sam, but _God_ was he fucking _wrong_.

It veers on eight o’ clock before he manages to unglue himself from the couch. He’s stiff, not from stillness, but a confined, cold rage that locks his joints in a vice. He accidentally crushes Stark’s remote in his hand. He almost feels bad about it.

The drive home is reckless. Helmet cast aside, fingers wrapped firmly around the gas, he bobs and weaves through the streets. The weather is biting, but he doesn’t don his usual leather jacket. He can’t feel his face—can’t hear anything else than wind roaring past the shells of his ears. He plays it fast and loose until he arrives in Brooklyn, somehow, in one piece.

This new apartment was an impulse decision. Since his last one turned into a shooting range a year or so ago, he’s been bunking with Sam at his place. It was convenient then; it allowed Steve to stay low and provided a sense of security he hadn’t experienced in a long while. However, D.C. is nearly a four-hour drive from Manhattan. With the frequent Avengers meetings, living so far away is impractical and frankly, a waste of gas and time.

He hasn’t completely abandoned the apartment in D.C. He visits on the weekends to ensure everything’s in check, but in Sam’s absence, being there for more than hour at a time is exasperating. It’s too quiet. Empty in a way even Cap’n notices as he sulks around the house, sniffing forlornly at Sam’s running sneakers and waiting for hours by the front door in the mornings.

The new place is a somewhat welcome change of pace.

Steve slings his satchel— _man purse, Sam would endlessly tease him_ —onto the couch with a sigh. The loft in Brooklyn is nice, a bit too minimalistic for his tastes, but it’s the best thing anyone was offering on such a short notice. It’s still reeks of “new apartment” and fresh paint. He tried to _Febreze_ the smell away, but Cap’n’s sensitive nose wasn’t having it. The walls are bare, free of he and Sam’s wine and finger-painting masterpieces. The décor is minimal. The furniture is impersonal and generic. While Sam’s home drove him mad, some days it was a better alternative than this gray echo-box.

Cap’n bounds down the hall and barrels into Steve’s knees. He leaps and yips excitedly, balancing on his hind legs so Steve can scratch behind his ears.

“You missed me, boy?” Cap’n licks his chops and barks, low and whiney. He presses his wet nose into Steve’s thigh and paws at his jeans. “Yeah, yeah, I missed you too. No need to be a crybaby about it, sheesh.”

After a warm shower, Steve lays in bed, Cap’n curled up against his side. Despite being a relatively small dog, he takes up a ridiculous amount of space. Seeing that he kicks and farts in his sleep, Steve has no problem with him occupying the opposite half of the bed. The house is dark and still, soft moonlight glowing behind the curtains. The low hum of cars passing down the street lulls him to a fitful slumber.

And when he sleeps, he dreams of ice.

[в я н у т ь]

APRIL 18TH, 2015

“Sokolov. Progress report.”

“W-well, I’ve been digging around in what’s left of the old S.H.I.E.L.D. databases for major Hydra activity within the past few years…”

“ _And_?”

“I couldn’t find any relevant information, sir. The bases that were recorded in the banks were already eliminated before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell. My deepest apologies, sir.”

Tony doesn’t slam his fist on the table, but he does the next best thing by refilling his glass with whiskey and guzzling it down. He blearily wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then waves Sokolov away.

“Go.”

“Pardon?”

“Go on, I’m relieving you for the day.”

“ _Sir_ , but I just got here fifteen minutes ago—”

“And I’m sending you home _now_ , so _go_. Shoo!”

More than a little miffed, Sokolov packs up all his equipment and strides away from the conference room. Steve watches him leave, a twinge of pity in his chest.

“So that guy was a fucking bust.”

“Go easy on him,” Rhodey chides, sweeping the liquor bottle away and capping it before Tony could reach for it again. He rests a comforting hand on Tony’s shoulder, gently easing a knot out of it with skilled fingers. Tony sighs and sags against him. “There’s a crazy amount of info in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database, we’re lucky Sokolov was even able to filter through all of that in such a short time.”

“I didn’t hire Sokolov so we can feel _lucky_ , James. I hired him to get some goddamn answers. Which he didn’t provide. So he’s fired.”

Great. That makes it the third hacker canned this month.

It’s been two months since Sam’s been abducted. Panic came and went in a flurry of conflicted, confusing emotions. Now the dread’s begun to set. Black and deadening like necrosis; an indigestible seed in the pit of his belly.

Everyone around the base is starting to get antsy, from the Avengers down to the staff. With Clint still out of commission and Thor struggling to subdue Loki (since no one knows how to build a proper prison in Asgard, apparently), they’re two members short. The newfound workload is grueling; their absence is dearly felt.

There’s been nothing but stillness on Hydra’s front. It’s like they vanished off the face of the earth, never to be heard of again. In wake of their inactivity, Tony changed game plans; instead of chasing a cold trail, they’ve been trying to pinpoint operating headquarters and play _Duck, Duck, Goose!_ until they found something useful. It’s far from the best plan, as sporadic and directionless as it is, but the staggering lack of material leaves them no better options.

While the S.H.I.E.L.D. database was a good starting point, there’s a mass of utter _garbage_ to filter through. Classified files that _might_ be useful are either completely redacted or so ridiculously encrypted, it would take months and a team of hackers to crack. The few Hydra bases that _are_ available for viewing, like Sokolov stated, were already decommissioned.

Steve reclines in his seat, shutting his eyes. He can feel a headache approaching, beating at his temple like a mallet against a drum. He can’t focus. He’d probably feel better if he had more than just a protein bar and a measly two hours of sleep last night.

“What about Natasha’s contacts? How long until they get back to us?” Steve asks.

“That _was_ Natasha’s contact.”

“… _shit_.”

“Yeah.”

Rhodey types furiously away on his Stark tablet, bottom lip drawn between his teeth as he focuses. His clothes are uncharacteristically wrinkled, an uneven beard taking over his face. Both he and Tony look like they haven’t left the conference room in days. Smell like it, too.

“I got in touch with some agents who worked with S.H.E.I.L.D. a few weeks after Tibet. They used to operate as moles in an underground arms trade in Eastern Europe. Their squadron was ‘mysteriously’ discharged before they completed the objective—no doubt Hydra stings were involved with _that_ decision—but the data they collected while active is…it’s a _lot_.”

Steve perks up at this. Tony throws his hands in the air.

“So what the hell are we waiting for? I’ll get the private line set up now—”

“Don’t waste your time,” Rhodey runs a tired hand over his face. “There were five members of the team. Since I asked for their help, two people went missing and another two bodies were found washed up on the Neva River shore. In pieces.”

“And the last guy?” Steve tentatively asks.

“On the run as of this morning. Just got the message this is the last time I’ll be hearing from him, too. But before he went offline, he uploaded a little treat for us.” Rhodey wirelessly connects the tablet to one of the many screens embedded in the wall. They wait a few prolonged seconds before it shines to life.

A 3D model of a globe spins lazily on its axis. Blue lines shoot from one location to the other, some thicker and more vibrant than others. They crisscross and zigzag all over the planet like a cobweb—Steve’s eyes jump back and forth trying to soak it all in.

“What’s this?”

“A rough map of where Hydra’s been importing and exporting over the past years. The thickest lines show the most regular activity, I’m guessing.”

He watches the globe carefully. Three blue lines shine brightest of them all.

Russia. The United States. Wakanda.

What the _fuck_ were Nazis doing in _Wakanda_? That’s the first question the barges into the forefront of his mind. Following that is an onslaught of others, his strategist brain working to answer all of them as quickly as possible. Giving the map another glance, it’s painstakingly clear it’s incomplete—an unpolished predecessor to something intended to be much bigger. It raises more questions than it answers and by Rhodey’s downtrodden—almost desolate—expression, he was expecting much more from it, too.

“This—this isn’t enough information. There’s no key, no coordinates, no dates,” Rhodey fumbles with the tablet, sweaty palms nearly dropping it. He looks ill. Steve furrows his brows.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I just—I…” he swallows thickly, looking everything _but_ alright. “Five people put their ass on the line because I asked them to, y’know? Five trustworthy soldiers—good men. A-and this is all I’ve got to show for it. This is what they died for.” He tosses the tablet aside and falls into his chair.

Tony’s out of his seat and by Rhodey’s side in seconds—the fastest Steve’s seen him move outside of his Iron Man suit. He kneels at the foot of Rhodey’s chair, lifting and cradling the sides of his face with big hands.

 “ _Heyheyhey_ —James. Look at me,” Tony’s voice is uncharacteristically soft, gentle and, dare say, soothing. It takes a little coaxing, but eventually, he does. “You made progress. Hell, you’ve made more progress in the past few minutes than _I_ did in the last two months. This is the step in the right direction, okay? Those men did not die in vain.”

Once again, Steve can’t help but feel like he’s intruding.

More hushed words are shared between them, obviously not for Steve’s prying ears. However, he can’t help but look—can’t help but feel like some emotional voyeur, feeding off his friends’ affection to fill the hole punched out of his chest. He watches Tony’s thumb idly rub at Rhodey’s knuckles. The bashful half-smiles he charms out of him. The feather-light kisses Tony plants on the underside of Rhodey’s jaw and— _God_ , Steve is _ill_ with aching; so touch-starved in Sam’s absence it’s made him _sick_.

Steve tears his eyes away, shamefaced for ogling so long, and backs silently away from the scene.

[в я н у т ь]

He likes to walk Cap’n in the evening, right after the sun sets and the sky is blue and ashen. Spring brings agreeable weather with warm mornings and cool, dewy nights. This new neighborhood is quiet, picturesque and, despite living in the community for a couple of weeks, foreign. It’s nothing like the one back in D.C., where you couldn’t bend the corner without seeing a familiar face. Many of the buildings there needed some renovation from time and ware, but the character and color of that neighborhood were unmatchable.

This new complex was the epitome of white gentrification. Full of pale-faced hipsters itching for a taste of diet-culture. Walking around the whitewashed streets of Brooklyn and clutching their bags whenever someone darker than a paper bag walked alongside them. He knew his home wouldn’t be the same as it was in the 40s. In many ways, he’s fucking _glad_ it’s not. However, this isn’t the change he anticipated.

Time has become this flavorless, monotonous toil full of restive nights and tireless work. Stress is a constant pressure against the center of his back—weighing him down like a roach underneath the sole of a hard boot. He wants a break—probably needs it—but he _can’t_ afford to waste any more time.

He’s staring off at some oddly duck-shaped cloud when his phone vibrates in his gym shorts. He quickly fishes it from his pocket.

“Rogers sp—”

“ _Uncle Steve_!” He yanks the phone away just in time not to get his eardrum blown out, opting to put the phone on speaker for his safety. Jody and Aubrey’s combined enthusiasm is a dangerous thing; Steve refuses to fall victim again.

 _“Sorry ‘bout that—you know how those two get sometimes. Once they get goin’, they can never stop.”_ comes Sarah’s cool voice over the line. Steve scratches his neck.

“Trust me, it’s fine. Just tell’em I said hi. So what’s going on?”

 _“Jesus, what’s_ not _going on? I’m surprised I even had a chance to call you, my phone’s been so busy.”_

“Family?”

_“And friends. And people I haven’t talked to since like 8 th grade. Shit, you know Alisha hit me up last week?”_

“Alisha Baker? Sam’s almost-high school sweetheart?” his eyebrows fly up at that.

 _“Yup, that’s the broad. She called me at six in the evening crying her poor lil’ heart out about my baby brother. I’m havin’ dinner with my ma and my kids, and here_ she _goes_ sobbin’ _on my line ‘til my food went cold.”_

Steve chuckles deep in his chest, settling against a bench as he watches Cap’n explore the terrain with his nose to the ground. It feels good to laugh. It’s been weeks since he’s done it, probably.

_“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. But I rather deal with her than FOXNews and CNN and what-have-you blowing up my line, y’know? I mean, they’re not calling me as much since it’s been a couple weeks since we went public, but I sure as hell get emails from them begging for a statement.”_

“If they’re bothering you too much, Stark and I can have that handled _immediately_ ,” he begins, no longer jovial.

_“Don’t worry ‘bout it, I’ve got it all together. It’s just Alisha, FOX and a couple weirdos in the Facebook comment section so far. If I’ve got a real problem, I’ll just tell the KGB hangin’ around my house.”_

“Stark’s guards aren’t that bad, are they?” While Tony himself never had guards flanking him at all times, the Avengers Tower is heavily protected. He hand-picked the most experienced and trusted sentinels from all over the nation to monitor their headquarters, and now a few of those same men watch over Darlene’s household.

_“I mean I can’t piss without some cat hovering on the other side of the door, but…I feel safe. Nobody’s gonna’ come and snatch my kids in the middle of the night, so it’s good enough for me.”_

They chat more as Steve heads back to his apartment, Cap’n running in wild, giddy circles ahead of him. She updates him on Darlene’s condition, slightly worsening since the last time they spoke, but she’s upholding her end of their promise. The conversation is a pleasant distraction and one of the few he had this week that didn’t revolve around squid Nazis. Quietly, he wishes she would call more often.

He unlocks his apartment door in midst of a trivial debate about lawn maintenance, of all things when he pauses dead in his tracks. Mouth suddenly dry and heart kickstarting in his chest, he removes the phone from his ear.

"Hey, uh, Sarah—I'm gonna call you back later, alright?" he doesn't wait for a response before he hits the end call button with a clammy thumb. Steve kicks the door shut so hard the walls rattle, face settling into a mask of morose purpose and mouth drawn into a line.

"Does this _really_ count as gentrification if you were here before everyone else? Something’s telling me it still does.”

“What do you want, Fury?”

Said man shrugs, movements only visible by the streaks of moonlight pouring into his living room. He’s dressed casually, which is odd for a man who he’s only seen in all-black fatigue. He wears a pair of hard jeans, sneakers and a dark sweater. A knitted cap and shades finish the civilian disguise, which made it easier for him to sneak into his apartment undetected, clearly. Fury’s seated at his dinner table with a bowl of _Cheerio’s_ he was clearly in the process of eating, feet propped up and crossed on his table.

Fury’s single raised eyebrow makes _Steve_ feels like he’s interrupting.

For _fuck’s_ sake.

“I asked you a question,” he presses, trying to keep the edge out of his tone. He fails notoriously—quite fantastically, actually. He couldn’t sound angrier even if someone decked him right in the jaw.

“You did ask me a question. And it was a dumb ass question, so I delegated not to answer it.” Steve almost forgot how much of a smartass the ex-director is. Steve hastily leads Cap’n to his bedroom and locks the door behind him; he contemplates grabbing a weapon while he’s in there, but wisely decides against it.

Thanks, and _only_ thanks, to Erskine’s serum, he could take Fury in a fistfight. Maybe. But there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that man isn’t armed to the teeth underneath his loose, unassuming clothes. Their last meeting was charged, but cordial. However, it’s been a year. Circumstances changed. _He’s_ changed, and he doesn’t have it in him to trust many agents these days; especially not ones with enough skeletons to turn their closet into a crypt.

Fury finishes chasing cereal around with his spoon when he returns. Steve pulls a chair from his table and sits. Despite punching out fake-Hitler on stage fifty times, he’s a shit actor. He was never any good holding up a convincing front and still isn’t. Therefore, he doesn’t try to keep the mistrust from his narrowed eyes. The uneasy way his teeth click and grind together.

“I’m not going to ask you again.”

“Good, because I wasn’t going to answer you, anyway.” He straightens himself out, feet firmly planted on the floor. “I’m not here to get ‘what I want,’ Rogers. Believe it or not, I’m here to help.”

Steve’s skeptical, but cautious hope blooms in his chest. The Avengers need all the aid they can scrounge up. Even if he doesn’t trust Fury and the ulterior motives that drive his actions, they can’t afford to be picky in these dire times.

“Don’t act surprised. Wilson is a good man; I don’t know where the hell you picked him up, but good men are hard to come by these days.” _I would know_ , Steve can imagine him adding. “I’d say I’m sore nobody tried to contact me, but the fact that none of you didn’t or _couldn’t_ mean I did my job well enough.”

“I’m guessing Tony’s announcement tipped you off.”

He nods curtly. “I’ve also noticed some tampering around in the S.H.I.E.L.D databases. I keep an eye on them every now and again, only to see some jackasses been trying to break into the encrypted files these past weeks.” Steve can feel Fury picking him apart under his steady, one-eyed gaze. “I won’t pretend to know what happened to Wilson, but I can guess by all the Hydra related records that were targeted in the archives.”

A thick silence follows. Steve looks away, staring into a dark corner until his vision blurs and the shadows dance.

Fury’s movements draw him back to the present. He reaches beside him and throws a nondescript bag onto the table with a sharp _clang_! From the depths of the sack, he pulls out a metal orb. It’s about the size of a tangerine, sleek and chrome.

“What the hell is that?” he asks uselessly, knowing he’ll never get a full answer out of this man.

Fury rolls the device in his palms a few times before tossing it—rather _carelessly_ , may he add—into Steve’s quick hands. “It’s a project S.H.I.E.L.D was working on before we were infiltrated. We never had the chance to complete it, but it’s useful.”

Steve spins the device around in his hand. It’s cold like ice; compact and far denser than Steve anticipated. He can’t even imagine how to use this contraption or figure out what it’s for. Fury stands and fixes his cap over his head.

“Thank you,” Steve says inaudibly, voice hardly carrying even in the stillness of his apartment.

He sits at the table, far long after Fury leaves.

[в я н у т ь]

Once Steve informs Tony that Fury paid him a friendly visit the night before, they find themselves in another three-man meeting immediately. Natasha is still absent for a reconnaissance in Estonia and Latvia, but they’ll fill her in when she returns in a few days. Bruce is off in his own private corner of the tower, toiling away with data and working himself sick trying to make use of these numbers.

Tony and Rhodey look considerably better than last time. Groomed, showered and shaved; eyes fresh like they finally caught up on sleep. Begrudgingly, Steve tries to overlook the obvious hickey peeking above Rhodey’s collar, which would explain why neither of them answered his calls (numerous texts _and_ voicemails) last night.

A surprising fourth attendee enters the area, Sokolov trudging into the conference room with heavy bags full of electronics. Ever the gentleman, Steve helps him with the equipment and gingerly places them on unoccupied surfaces. Sokolov rightfully looks a little smug, being called back after being fired by the one and only Tony Stark. The Ukrainian hacker keeps his attitude professional; however, Steve could detect his haughtiness from a mile away.

Tony spins the orb around in his hand, raising it up to his curious eyes. He doesn’t bother greeting the prodigal hacker, instead jumping straight to the point. “This metal golf ball supposedly contains a lot of highly classified information; much better than whatever we would’ve scraped out of the S.H.I.E.L.D. databases. Problem is, nobody here knows how to work it.”

“Fury could’ve at least handed us a manual or something,” Rhodey mutters irately, rubbing his newly shaven jaw.

Sokolov, despite his rough first impression, is a wildly competent hacker once he’s got something concrete for work with. The man is hunched over one of the many monitors in his set-up, Rhodey and Stark cornering him as they look on and comment in fast-paced technobabble. Completely out of his element, Steve remains seated; he scrolls through treats Sarah screenshotted from Pinterest and imagines having the time (and skill) to actually bake them.

Sokolov finally pulls away from his workstation, cautious and wary, but satisfied. The orb doesn’t look any different than it did forty-five minutes ago, but when he connects the device to the room’s central control panel, it begins to violently whir. The device expands like an insect, four “legs” suddenly darting out and seeking various ports to bury themselves into. Steve observes with mild unease as the device gradually overloads the panel, praying to God that whatever Fury handed him isn’t gonna’ blow the building into goddamn bits.

The overhead lights surge with brightness, then go out with a buzz. The room descends in stiff, unyielding darkness.

 _“Download complete. Data processing…”_ JARVIS reports from above.

One by one, each screen in the conference room returns to life. Steve quickly recognizes another map, not unlike Rhodey’s and possibly created from the same model. He finds himself spinning in endless circles on his heel to soak it all in. An alarming number of red dots crop up on every continent, ranging from pin-point small to the size of his thumb.

“JARVIS,” Tony calls, prying his eyes away from a screen. The AI bleeps a friendly tune in greeting. “Tell me what the hell I’m looking at right now,”

 _“Name: Global Analysis and Investigation of Hydra Activity, or GAIHA. According to the contents of the device, this is a compilation of all functional Hydra mission controls, rendezvous points, and hideouts that’s existed from 1950 to 2000. It’s also equipped with live street-camera feed and to-the-day activity notifications for a select few HQs,”_ the AI pauses. _“Although this information is likely accurate, this device is operating on a bootlegged, outdated OS that hasn’t been used by Hydra since they’ve implemented a new one in 2001.”_

There’s a beat of complete silence.

“ _Holy shit_ , wow,” Rhodey sputters, messaging the wrinkles on his forehead (that will undoubtedly double by the end of the day). “So, um…”

“Damn,” Steve fills in eloquently.

Tony tentatively approaches the touch-screen displays and taps a red dot hovering above Ecatepec, Mexico. Live footage of an empty street across from an “abandoned” supermarket fills the screen. A window opens in the corner of the screen with a log of access dates highlighted in yellow. This particular location hasn’t been touched since September 4th, 1997.

“God, I could kiss Fury right on his shiny, bald head,” he murmurs, dark eyes gleaming. “JARVIS, cancel my meetings for the day. We’ve got work to do.”

“ _Of course, sir.”_

[в я н у т ь]

MAY 3rd, 2015

It smells like shit.

Well, not _exactly_ like shit, but dead fish, polluted seawater, and gasoline is a close contender. Natasha says the rest of this area smells the same and at this point, walking with his nose tucked into the crook of his arm, he’s not in any position to doubt her.

It’s nearly black outside; an earlier rainstorm left the sky starless and bleak. A few high mast lights keep the seaport illuminated, casting everything in a cloying yellow with stark shadows. Waves slap against the terminal. The drone of a generator grows obnoxious as Steve slinks further into enemy territory.

Rhodey, being the tech-wizard that he is, had the genius idea to overlap his map and Fury’s a few weeks ago. Now they could finally add more context to those arrows stretching across the globe. Combined with the activity logs and camera feeds, they found themselves working with more information than they’ve ever had before. All that was left to do was evaluate what material was relevant to their search.

Which led Steve and Natasha on a two-man mission to Port Hueneme, California.

Port Hueneme was a considerably small red dot on the map. Not the tiniest, but certainly not big enough to draw attention to. Even when the hideout pinged yellow on the map, no one in the tower was overly concerned. Every continent is crawling with Hydra bases, minor activity isn’t anything new.

Until, of course, they examined the activity log and lo and behold—that particular hideout has been consistently raging with activity every month since the day Sam was abducted.

 _“’Just breached the security on the warehouse. You have approximately three minutes to get in before the system catches up and a minute before the cameras come back online,”_ Natasha intones over the ear-com. The overhead door withdraws sluggishly. Steve stands irascibly outside, waiting until the gap is large enough for him to crawl right through with ease.

He and Nat aren’t exactly operating with unlimited time here—if the GAIHA could detect recent activity despite being fifteen years old, no doubt that whatever OS Hydra uses now can spot them once the frazzled signal reconnects. This is a quick investigation; a grab-and-go sort of mission where they need to amass as much data as possible with as little detection as they could muster.

The warehouse is smaller than it appeared outside, that much he can determine from the way his footsteps echo throughout the building. He would’ve appreciated more lighting than the weak flashlight he’s waving around like a glowstick, but most of the power was cut in order to infiltrate the hideout undetected. There’s a strong odor of bleach and other antiseptics in the stale air; it burns his nose. Makes it hard to breathe.

 _“Anything so far?”_ Natasha asks after a few tense minutes.

“Nothing,” Steve says, voice low. There’s an open box hiding behind a shelf. He shines the light on it, then kicks it with disdain once he realizes it like everything else in this godforsaken place, is empty. “‘Looks like whatever was here before all got shipped out yesterday.”

_“Weapons?”_

“Maybe. They’d be pretty easy to move from an out-of-the-way place like this.”

Steve reaches the end of the nth isle with a sigh, failing to find anything worthwhile once again. The stray boxes and empty shelves already start to pick up dust. He runs a tired hand through his hair, scratching his scalp.

_“Ready to call it in?”_

“Christ, might as well. There’s nothing else to see, and the longer we stay, the more we risk—”

_Squeak!_

Steve’s foot flies up as he takes a startled step back. He glances down, heart caught in his throat.

A teddy bear. He stepped on a teddy bear.

 _“Hey—Cap? Everything good down there?_ Cap _?”_

He licks his lips, but suddenly his tongue is dry. He picks the bear up from the floor and flashes the light over it. It’s soft. Fleecy. Likely homemade if the crooked stitches lining its form means anything. He runs a thumb over a dark red patch of matted “fur.”

Dried blood.

_“I’m coming down,”_

He peers over his shoulder at the wall, observing it through slitted eyes. The subtle change in material. The stunted distance from the entrance. Something’s not right.

“What are this place’s exact measurements?”

Nat pauses. _“Ten-thousand square feet, give or take. Why?”_

“Think I found something,” he says through gritted teeth, pulling the shield from his knapsack. He raps his knuckles against the wall. Hollow.

It takes a few ferocious blows before the shield bursts through the other side of the divider. It takes even more for him to punch out a hole wide enough for him to crawl through. When his head pokes through the other side, what he finds is disconcerting.

“People,” he chokes as if all the oxygen’s been squeezed from his lungs. “Hydra’s been exporting _people_.”

The set up beyond the divider is downright crude and barbaric. Human-sized cages. Filthy buckets of waste. Crates of food and supplies placed in the furthest corner away from the hostages, presumably. The place reeks of feces, rot, and gunmetal, which would explain the excessive bleach stench when he arrived.

His fists tremble with rage, teeth so tightly clenched together his entire jaw throbs.

_“Shit, Cap—we’ve got company!”_

He launches right into action, retrieving a gun from his knapsack. The op called for little confrontation, but it’s only _right_ to take a few Nazis out whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Since that fateful mission in Tibet, there’s been an obvious and growing schism between him and Natasha. They only talk when necessary. Even while speaking, eye contact is rare. Words are stilted. Lips move, still, there’s silence.

But when they’re on the battlefield, none of that exists. When it’s Cap and Widow against the odds, they’re back to that seamless, well-oiled machine that toils without a hitch.

Steve knocks the M14 out an assailant’s grasp. Steve smashes the end of his shield into his face and kicks him hard in the stomach. Another charges him from his blind spot, but Nat delivers a quick bullet into the side of his temple. It’s messy. Steve doesn’t care about the blood on his suit.

Three more agents leap from the Humvee parked outside the warehouse. A wall of bullets come rushing to him, but he rolls behind shipping container. Steve takes a half-second to inhale, shaky hands loading the clip of his gun.

The remaining Hydra agents are exterminated easily enough, but Nat curtly warns there’s more on the way. With no time to hide the bodies, they race to ditch the scene when—

“ _W-w-ait_! _Wait_!”

His foot half in the Humvee Hydra so graciously provided them, Steve whips around with wide eyes and scours the scene. Amongst the slew of bodies sprawled across the port, someone managed to survive. Steve’s zeroes in on a single man staggering towards the getaway jeep, arm wrapped around the place he was obviously shot.

“Wait! S-sh-it, _please_! _Wait_ _for me_!”

“Is that fucking—” Natasha spits.

“ _Rumlow?_ ”

Rumlow trips over his feet and collapses like a sack of meat. He doesn’t stop shouting, though; voice broken and pathetic with his face mashed into the concrete. He’ll die the way he deserves, here—in a puddle of blood, sweat, and spit. Likely to be disposed of the way Hydra disposes of everything else: efficiently and without a trace.

“Cap—we need to go _now_!” Nat hisses urgently, already in the driver’s seat and revving the vehicle up. Faintly, in the distance, he hears another Humvee screeching around a corner.

 _“Wait!_ I-I’ll tell you a-anything _fuck_ ju—” he gasps loudly. Breathlessly, then chokes out: “ _Please_!”

Steve’s feet hit the concrete again.

[в я н у т ь]

He’s reminded too much of the months spent touring South America. Clearly, the circumstances and settings are wildly different, but the fear, the regret, the _uncertainty_ —it’s all the same. Even the ratty motel he’s in feels familiar.

The sun is just beginning to peak over the horizon. He hasn’t caught a wink of sleep all night—didn’t even get a chance to shower after dragging his tired body into the room, finally losing their tail and fleeing to Los Angeles. He’s still in the same stealth apparel as the night before, the fabric now rock-hard with dried blood. He smells—he _knows_ he does. Like sweat, grime and fishy seawater. At 6 AM, the tiny shower in the motel room is free for the taking.

However, that means he’d have to pry his eyes off the son of a bitch hogtied to the chair before him.

Often, he wonders what kind of stringent training Natasha endured before she joined the Avengers. A factotum in her own right, he’s witnessed the Russian spy execute many field-handy tasks: piloting, hacking, and, probably the most impressive yet, stabilizing a man bleeding to death with only bare-bone materials.

Uselessly, Rumlow’s been drifting in and out of sleep for hours, head lolling around and bumping into the makeshift IV drip Natasha fashioned (looking more like a burden than the asset he urged he was in the backseat of the Humvee). For the same amount of time, Steve sat perched at the edge of the thin mattress. Contemplating. Observing. Hoping that this dicey stunt he pulled wouldn’t boomerang like the rest.

There’s hardly any light in the room, but just enough for the sun’s fledgling rays to touch Rumlow’s disfigured face. Steve’s lip raises in mild disgust.

Guess that’s what having an entire building drop on you looks like.

He reacts a beat late when Natasha enters the room again, rubbing his sticky, blurry eyes. She returns with a bag of items, then dumps the contents unceremoniously onto the counter. She takes a long sip of coffee with her other hand.

“He’s woken up yet?” she asks, throwing Steve a protein bar without looking. He unwraps it and takes a large bite; he didn’t even realize he was _this_ hungry.

“Barely. He’s opened his eyes a few times, but hasn’t said anything.”

Natasha nods, red lips pressed together. She opens a box of self-injecting adrenaline shots, and in the next moment, a needle finds itself buried deep in Rumlow’s thigh. Within seconds, the man is given a jumpstart, eyes wide and glassy and chest heaving.

“Rise and shine,” Nat says flatly. Rifling through a small backpack, she grabs a standard pistol from its depths. She reloads it, then turns the safety off with an audible click. She then activates a timer on her phone, the numbers steadily ticking down each second. “You have fifteen minutes to make yourself worth keeping alive.”

Nat shoots Steve a look, and he takes it over from there.

“What the hell happened to you?” The question isn’t directly relevant to his search for Sam, but curiosity gnaws at him like a termite with soft wood. Before S.H.I.E.L.D was run race-first into the ground, Rumlow was one of Hydra’s most lucrative and favorite attack dogs. Now, he’s been resigned to a foot soldier who guards a seaport of all things.

“What happened to _me_?” he repeats. His tongue is sharp, old rage and spite bubbling to the surface. “ _You_ happened to me. ‘Fucked up everything I had going ‘cause you don’t know how to stay dead. I got demoted to cannon fodder.”

“Demoted?” Natasha raises an eyebrow at this. “Hydra doesn't ‘demote’ agents. They get killed.”

“I was useful. I _am_ useful. The big guys showed me as much mercy as you can expect. They hacked off the one good leg that didn't get crushed in the explosion, but I'm still alive, right?” he sneers. His grin is toothy and crooked, the skin of his lips burned clean off his face.

Steve leans forward onto his knees, face just shy of a foot from Rumlow’s. In the absence of light, his eyes appear tempest gray; grim face pronounced by sharp shadows slatted across his features. “So, answer me this,” Rumlow swallows thickly, for the first time realizing his life is cradled in the palms of a man who’d much rather see him dead any other day. “why the hell are people being exported from Port Hueneme?”

And there goes the million-dollar question.

Rumlow presses his lips together. His eyes bounce around the room, staring at the tacky striped wallpaper and dirty carpet. Even the lowest agents were drilled to take their lives before spilling any of Hydra’s secrets, no matter how superficial. Thirty seconds pass in sworn silence.

Natasha casually presses her pistol against the soft flesh behind his ear. "Speak. Otherwise, I'm cutting your ten minutes to ten seconds."

“I don’t know—” Natasha cocks the gun, a finger teasing the trigger. “— _fucking_ hell, woman! I don’t know exactly what for; they don’t tell me _shit_ anymore. The only thing I hear from the chain of command is what to do and when to do it.”

“So, you’ve been guarding this warehouse for months and you haven’t picked up anything? You really are useless.” she deadpans.

“Everybody behind the divider? Bums and hookers, a few coloreds here and there. Apparently, nobody gives a shit when they go missing. They’re the easiest people to grab off the street and cart away without attention.” Rumlow supplies indignantly.

“Then how the hell did a _child_ end up thrown into the mix?”

Brock shrugs noncommittally. Steve’s jaw sets.

“Sometimes bums and hookers have kids, too."

“Where exactly are these people being exported to? I doubt Hydra’s opening a cruise liner for hostages,” Natasha bites, wry.

“The route and ship change constantly. If you can track the pattern, kudos to you; but _I_ can’t.” Rumlow stares at his dirty boots, tonguing his split lip until its starts bleeding again. He exhales slowly, clearly deep in thought, before speaking again. “There’s been a lot of… _‘constructional activity’_ these past years. Even before I got kicked out of the big boys’ club, I wasn’t allowed to hear much, but it—it’s _big_.”

“It?”

“I’m talking about bunkers on fuckin’ ‘ _roids_ , man. I was buddy-buddy with some jackass on the development team back in the day; he snuck me a glance at some rough architecture from the forties. I’ve never witnessed something like this in my life. Even my bosses' bosses don't know what the fuck is going on anymore. Thought S.H.I.E.L.D falling was bad? You haven’t seen _shit_ yet,” a foreboding darkness passes over his eyes. “We all haven’t.”

Rumlow’s words hang in the air.

All those defunct bases in South America; hell, all those red dots on the _globe_ …Hydra’s takeover already happened. Their silent infiltration is complete. The only thing left for them is to wait. But for _what_? When so many nations are compromised, why _wait_ while the world is ripe for the reaping?

“You have a minute left,” Nat hums.

“ _What_? I’ve _more_ than proved my worth! I told you shit that nobody else knows! You couldn’t even _hope_ to _pry_ this kind of info out of—”

“Fifty seconds.”

“Fucking—throw me a _bone_! What more do you want from me, huh? Want me to tell you the last time I took a piss or something? Tell you how long it took whip my cock out and tuck it back in?”

“I could always just shoot you now if you want.”

“ _Tibet_. Tell me all you know about Hydra’s last fight in _Tibet._ ” Steve hisses loudly, effectively silencing both of them. Nat withdraws like a snake and twirls her gun around her finger. _Thirty seconds_ , she mouths.

“A couple months ago, yeah?

“Yes, _that_ one.”

“The one where we lost two fucking fighter jets and _forty_ men in one fight, but everyone _still_ called it a success? _Of fucking course_ , that was you, wasn’t it, huh? You and this rabid _bitch_?”

Steve’s thought process comes to a grinding stop. Natasha stops toying with the gun.

“Wait—they _what_?”

“You heard me. They said it was a _success_. I wasn’t stationed anywhere near China, but everyone in my sector was relieved for the day to celebrate. ‘Don’t remember what exactly happened after—I was drunk as shit, probably—but apparently they pulled some stupid piece of cargo out a lake and—"

He moves faster than he realizes, off the bed and on his feet so swiftly even Natasha is startled. Driven purely by rage— _seething_ and _hot_ and _corybantic_ —he lifts Rumlow by his throat like a runt pig, taking the entire seat with him.

“That was _fucking_ Sam! _Sam Wilson_ —the _Falcon_!” His voice is loud enough to wake the entire motel. Rumlow gags and spits, face growing purple. “What does Hydra want with him?! _Answer me_!”

“He probably won’t be able to speak if you crush his larynx, Cap.”

It takes several moments to assuage his wrath, but he eventually releases Rumlow from his grip. The chair rattles against the floor when it drops. Rumlow sucks in noisy mouthfuls of air, shocked and frightened, but unable to keep his mouth shut.

“H- _him_?” he spits shakily. “Are you _serious_? You’re d-doing all of this shit for that fucking _nig_ —”

Steve knocks his lights out before he could finish his sentence.

[в я н у т ь]

There’s a joke about western America and Denny’s that he can’t quite recall, but he passingly thinks about it as he tucks into a short stack of pancakes. Steve’s already scarfed down three within minutes of the waitress leaving the table, and with two more left on his plate, he knows he’ll need more. He drowns the mountain with syrup and slathers it with enough butter to clog his arteries. There’s a full house of bacon, sausages, eggs, and grits to accompany his pancakes, and to complete his meal, a glass of orange juice sits at his right.

He hasn’t exactly eaten a full breakfast since Sam was abducted. Sue him.

He’s seated in the cramped Denny’s attached to the motel. Natasha’s been making calls to the Avengers tower all day from various locations around Los Angeles, just in case Hydra tries to tap their signal. She’s supposed to meet him in fifteen minutes to talk about their next step.

News plays on an old, box-like TV, sequestered in the corner across from him. He swallows thickly as the next segment, badly titled _Finding Falcon_ , rolls in. There’s roundtable of five, old white guys all at various stages of bald, and Steve mentally checks out.

There have been countless debates over Tony’s announcement for months. Steve’s heard about every rendition and misinterpretation of the story imaginable. Some say Flacon just up and _left_ the Avengers. Others say it’s fear mongering. There’s even a group of people blaming it on alien involvement, and unsurprisingly, that theory’s growing traction somewhere in the deep web.

A few people decided to step-in and say their piece on national television, unable to miss out on this media circus. The head of the D.C. police department, for example, who so _helpfully_ supplied the public with a short list of misdemeanors on Sam’s otherwise spotless record.

At one point, Sam was a “meme.” Just days after being pronounced missing, hundreds of jokes made in poor taste flooded social media. A few even made it on the news. _Where’s Wilson?_ one read, with Sam’s face crudely photoshopped on a red-and-white striped shirt.

The lack of empathy astounded him. And still does, every day.

“Update?” he asks once Natasha arrives and sits, tearing into a greasy piece of bacon. Oil drips down his fingers. He licks it off.

“Tony wants us back in New York as soon as possible. He’s auto-piloting a quinjet our way,”

“When should it land?”

“Around five. He’ll send us the location in an hour.”

Steve spears his pancakes with his fork, a frown forming on his face.

“I don’t imagine we’re bringing Rumlow to the tower, are we?” The last thing they need to do is hold dangerous Neo-Nazi smack-dab in the heart of Manhattan.

“Nope,” Natasha steals a sausage from his plate. “He’s utilizing one of his Batcaves off the coast instead.”

Steve finishes his meal in quietude. Occasionally he sneaks a glance at Nat, with her nose buried in her phone or gazing out the window or picking the threads in her hoodie. Looking everywhere else but at Steve, like he only exists when there’s an update.

He can’t take it anymore. He can’t lose any more people than he’s already been forced to.

“I’m sorry,” he says after the waitress leaves the table with his empty plates. He tips her generously for her troubles.

Natasha’s fingers still, halting whatever message she was sending. She places her phone face-down on the table, giving him undivided attention. Under her steel-blue focus, Steve tries not to fidget.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, this time with more conviction. “for what happened in Tibet. I shouldn’t have said that about you; shouldn’t have made it seem like you had a choice whether or not to leave Sam behind. And I know—I’m three months too late for this apology; I understand if you don’t forgive me. I…I just want my friend back, y’know?”

Her face is unreadable, which isn’t uncommon for Natasha, but he’s desperate for feedback. An eternity passes before she responds. Nervously, he presses his fingers into the edge of the table.

“I’m not going to pretend like it didn’t hurt, because it did. I was mad. For a while. But I stopped being mad at you a long time ago.”

“Really?”

“It was a shitty thing to say, I’m not going to excuse it. Clint was a sneeze away from his lungs giving out and I’d spent the previous two days making sure no one keeled over in their sleep. It was piss poor timing, all around,” she purses her lips in deliberation. “But you thought Wilson _died_. I and Wilson are close, but we aren’t dating. I didn’t spend nearly the last two years of my life getting into trouble with him or living in his pocket. I know you were hurt, Steve.”

“Then why were you still mad?” he asks cautiously.

“It was directed at myself, mostly. I kept thinking about what you said—that maybe I _could’ve_ turned around and gone back for him. Maybe the fuel _could’ve_ lasted long enough to reach a safe landing spot if I did. Maybe I _did_ put Clint’s life before Sam’s—”

“Nat,” he says sternly, frowning.

“I was mad because it felt like I failed _Sam_. Because every time I looked at you, I kept thinking about all the shit I could’ve done to _avoid_ this.”

“This isn’t your fault,” Steve reaches across the table and touches her hand. Her fingers are cold.

She doesn’t say anything.

[в я н у т ь]

Steve adjusts his body for the millionth time, head sinking into Sam’s pillow. If he breathes hard enough, he can still smell the coconut oil in the satin pillowcase. The hint of his cologne and natural musk underneath the comforter. He, however, has no intention of inhaling a lungful of dust.

Cap’n entertains himself by running around the apartment, clearly happy to be back ‘home.’ He leaps from sofa to sofa. Bites up Steve’s running shoes in a way he hasn’t done since he was first adopted. He tires himself out soon enough, joining Steve on the bed. He settles across from Steve, paws tucked under his body and tongue out.

“You remember back in the day when Sam wouldn’t let you on the bed?” Steve asks, scratching behind Cap’n’s ear. “That’s ‘cause you kept drooling on the sheets, you big goof. Try not to do that tonight, okay? I don’t want to wash the sheets just yet.”

Cap’n sneezes in response. Steve rolls his eyes.

It’s been a long, tiresome week—even longer and more tiresome than it usually is. Rumlow was safely escorted to Tony’s private island two days ago, but now, suddenly, he has demands. Ridiculous ones that he clearly spent the trip back the east coast thinking about, hopped up on opioids and ibuprofen.

  1. He wants five-hundred-thousand dollars wired to a private, overseas account every time he’s interrogated.
  2. He wants new prosthetic legs made of Adamantium.
  3. And the most absurd of them, when he’s finished “cucking for you spineless liberals”—whatever the fuck _that_ meant—he wants a free quinjet ride out the U.S. and insurance that the Avengers would never seek him out again.



There was utter pandemonium amongst the Avengers. 48 hours later and still no one knows what to do with him.

Steve rises, stretching. It’s late afternoon, but he hasn’t really bothered to leave Sam’s bed all day. It still aches to be in their apartment without him, but the pain is starting to fade now that viable progress is being made. Before he knows it, Sam will be back in the states. Back home and in his arms, where Steve swears he’ll never let him leave from.

He dusts the apartment and does minor tidying. He watches the cooking channel in his boxers while eating stale cereal from the box. When he finishes, he hops in the bathroom, rubs one out against the shower wall, then continues his well-earned day of being worthless and lazy.

Steve’s in the kitchen, adding as many toppings as two pieces of bread could physically hold when the doorbell rings. He sucks the mayonnaise off his thumb, forces his legs through a pair of pants, then answers the door.

Junie’s mother reclines against the wall, a container held in her dainty hands.

“Good afternoon, Rogers,” Mrs. Thornton greets with a quiet smile. She offers Steve the container. “I was wondering when you’d pop back in this weekend; Junie’s been holding thing hostage in the fridge for almost two days.”

Steve curiously pops the top off the container. His nose fills with a sweet, mouthwatering aroma. It’s cake. _Birthday_ cake.

“ _Goddamn it_ , I missed it, didn’t I?” Steve sighs dragging his free hand down his face. He promised her that he’d pop up at her birthday dressed at Captain America months ago; he even swore he’d bring the shield too. Instead of eating cake and barbeque, he stood in an ice-cold room for hours, listening to a Neo-Nazi’s demands.

“I don’t know who was more upset: Junie or my husband. You know, he wanted to hold the shield too. Apparently, he’s a big fan.”

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, chest hot with shame and remorse.

“Christ, can you tell Junie I’m so sorry for missing her birthday party? I got caught up in work this entire week.”

 “It’s no problem, Rogers. She’s a thirteen, she’s a big girl now. I guess her first act of maturity was saving you the last piece of cake,” Mrs. Thornton raises a brow and smirks. “You know how that girl feels about her cake.”

“Of course. Thank you.”

Steve closes the door. He sets down the cake and puts his unfinished sandwich in the refrigerator, no longer hungry. He heads back to Sam’s room, only to find shoes scattered all over the carpet.

“Damn it, Cap’n, I thought we’ve already been through this!” Steve shouts. Cap’n growls from the closet, probably having his way with Sam’s sneakers for the second time today. Sighing in resignation, he begins gathering loafers, boots, and sandals in his arms. Cap’n, ever the scoundrel, aborts the mission and hauls ass once Steve reaches the closet door.

Steve places the shoes back into their respective boxes, lining those that don’t have any neatly along the wall like Sam usually does. He opens a box, ready to store a pair of embarrassing purple oxfords (that never need to see the light of day again, Jesus), only to be met with a bunch of cloth and random junk inside. Steve frowns.

Odd.

He empties the box on the floor, casually sifting through the pile. There are paperclips. Some old gum wrappers. Old doctor’s notes. Unused white rags.

Then right there—right at the bottom of heap he finds an explanation for this inconspicuous shoebox, shoved into the dark corner of their closet and filled with trash:

A flip-phone with the letter ‘S’ scratched into it.

[в я н у т ь]

JUNE 6TH, 2015

He’s inconsolable. Furious. Miserable. Agitated.

He’s been this way bordering on two weeks and isn’t getting any better. Steve’s never been a particularly cheerful dude (that was the other big, musclebound blond), but this all-encompassing, depressive state is out of character for a man who’s made a brand off his optimism. He stalks through the hallways with his jaw set and body tense. The tower staff parts for him, fleeing to either side of the path in fear they’d get steamrolled for lingering too long.

Steve enters the conference room silently, taking a seat at the full table. He folds his arms over his chest and curls in on himself. As if he’s an unremarkable presence rather than a two-hundred-pound, six-foot-and-half super soldier.

Who’s brooding, on top of that.

“It’s good to have you back, Barton,” Rhodey starts before the meeting has a chance to become awkward. Again. Clint smiles easily, folding his arms behind his head.

“It’s good to _be_ back. It’s been a minute since I bust my chops around here,” Clint spent his out-time on an isolated homestead in Who Cares, Kansas. While he was supposed to be in bed, recovering until Banner completed the “bio-enhanced synthetic flesh” for his damaged lungs, he was doing menial farm work (like any other rube from Iowa) to pass time.

“An inside source tells me you’re a better farmer than spy,” Tony quips, connecting the GAIHA to the control panel.

“Yeah? Well, tell your inside source to mind her business next time she visits.” They get their last laughs in before the meeting commences.

“Rumlow’s refusing to answer any more questions until we agree, fully, to his terms.” Tony starts from the head of the table. “Even with some, uh, _mild persuasion_ , he hasn’t said another word.”

“We shouldn't acquiesce more than we already have. There's no way Hydra doesn't know that an agent like Rumlow has defected from their forces. We’re already granting him protection just by holding him captive.” Rhodey folds his arms, jaw set.

"Maybe he's a trojan horse?" Banner offers.

 

"I would say, but Cap and Romanoff infiltrated Port Hueneme right under Hydra's nose. There’s no way they would've known in time to construct a cohesive plan."

"Think about it like this,” interrupts Clint, with his hands folded under his chin. “Rumlow has nothing to lose and everything to gain by helping us. He's lost both his legs and face’s been burned half off. He's been demoted to food for powder and basically left to live until a stray bullet takes him out for good. He's only being kept alive to be made an example out of—it's a scare tactic to keep the other troopers in line. This happens all the time with extremists.”

Rhodey nods in agreement. "His options were either to be a laughing stock until he dies or make off with Hydra's secrets for prize money. He's Nazi scum, but it's common sense."

"He could just be lying to us, the same way he lied about the trackers in his body," Banner adds quietly from the other end of the table.

"Been there, done that. I and James are fact-checking everything he says before we even consider giving him anything for it."

Natasha shoots Tony a dubious look. "Is that why there’s a bunch of adamantium stocked up in your lab?"

"He's told us the truth so far, so I’m trying out some positive reinforcement. Maybe if he sees progress being made with his demands, he’ll tell us more on—" He taps something on his tablet, and a recording of Rumlow appears on the TVs. “ _this_.”

_"There's these…sites. These burning sites out in the middle of nowhere. You get put on ‘gas duty’ if you fuck up bad enough and you squadron leader is a real jackass. They send you out to the boonies with a bunch of other sons of bitches. Take you hours away from civilization for a whole week, tops.”_

_"And what's at these burning sites?"_

_"Bodies. Just…nothing but piles and piles of bodies dumped in the middle of an empty field," Rumlow licks the rough skin of his lips. "But it's not just any old corpses, man, it's some real fucked up shit. I'm talking about people with like seven limbs and two heads. Arms and legs growing out of places they don't belong, looking like some kid’s fucked up science project,” the edge of his mouth kicks up in a grin. “Y’know, I saw some dead broad with somebody else’s muff sewn to her face once? Two vags ain’t as hot as you think."_

_"How often are bodies dumped there?"_

_"I don't know. But they send soldiers to gas duty every month."_

A dour hush follows the end of the clip. So quiet, he can hear air channeling through the vents.

"So of course, after hearing this, I and James head out to the location he gave us to investigate for ourselves.” He taps another button on his Stark tablet.

The screen shows an aerial view of a pastureland in the dead of night, likely taken from Tony's suit as he coasted undetected over the site. The ground looks like an empty mouth of darkness, void of any definable features other than bright, controlled fires spread across its expanse.

"That whole area reeked. It was so bad." James groused, repelled. Tony places a comforting hand on the small of his back, rubbing in slow circles. "And it isn't the only burning site, according to Rumlow."

"Then there have to be more places where humans are being trafficked,” Steve adds.

"So, this is Hydra's big plan? Kidnap random people, experiment with them and send'em back to be burned?"

"The failed ones, maybe,” Clint says. “I haven't heard of something so extreme, but this isn't the first time Hydra's pulled shit like this."

(Steve thinks of feral blue eyes. Pale, dirty skin stretched thin over solid muscle. Teeth bared, blood staining them red.

 _I won't fight you,_ he said. _You're my best friend._ )

The meeting drags on forever. There’s more back and forth arguing from every side of the table. No one can decide whether to ditch Rumlow and continue with the information they have, or give in and see just how much material he gathered as a high-ranking officer.

The meeting comes to an end, and they’re no further than they were four hours ago.

[в я н у т ь]

Natasha pops up next to Steve while he's taking Cap’n for a walk. He isn’t surprised when company suddenly joins his on the winding, scenic path, but he doesn’t bother with a greeting. He’s been taking a different path to walk Cap’n this week. There are flowers and perfectly clipped shrubbery and short trees, just tall enough to block the brunt of the sun’s heat without casting the pathway in darkness; he supposes it’s supposed to be calming. He doesn’t know if it’s working yet.

"You should've told me the truth," he says without sparing her glance. She falls into step beside him, wearing a plain pair of shades, a hot and sweatshirt to dodge the public eye. Despite the heat, her red hair is tucked under a skullcap.

"I didn't expect it to go on for as long as it did…I thought he would tell you himself,”

“Sucks he didn’t get the chance to, right?” There’s more hurt in his tone than he anticipated.

Guess the scenic route isn’t working.

"I'm sorry," her voice is nearly muffled by the whispering wind and murmuring leaves. A month ago, he said the same thing to her, with his tongue tied and anxiety making him wonder if Natasha would ever bother to talk to him again. He would find it funny if he wasn't so fucking miserable.

"I…I don't know what to say anymore." Which is preposterous, considering how long he spent ruminating over his exact words. In the middle of the night when he should be sleeping, while he’s showing, while he’s eating; he conceived about every way this conversation could go. In each vision, he always knew what to say. Had some five-minute-long Captain America-esque monologue prepared, varying from remorseful to indignant to just downright furious.

But now, he is just hopelessly out of things to say. Things to _feel_.

He's exhausted himself being angry and hurt for too many days. He's like a fire put out with dirt, chest smoldering, and lungs filled with ashes.

A hot gust tousles his hair and tickles his scalp. It's getting long, just enough to fall past the tip of his ears. Tony said he was “ready to embrace the 90s” with a bowl-cut and middle part; it didn’t help that the asshole referred to him Devon Sawa all day, which only makes him want to buzz it right off even more.  

At six in the evening, the sun’s still blazing as it steadily descends. He doesn’t remember summer being this hot and Brooklyn. Natasha sits with him, on the opposite side of a bench, and watches the sunset. She stays, silently, until the gilded sky gives to darkness leaden with even darker rainclouds. Steve sits in the same spot long after she leaves, eyeing the few stars in the sky. He walks Cap'n home by himself.

He picked up drawing again. Went out and bought a haul of art supplies and canvases, only to be grow disparaged by his lack of practice. He sat outside on his balcony once, attempting to paint the cityscape—something he used to do all the time, sick at home in the 30s—but the colors were muddy, and the buildings were shaped like lifeless, flat boxes. Steve hasn’t touched his paints since.

He’s also started cooking again, thanks to Sarah’s encouragement. His television doesn’t leave the Cooking Network and the only books he’s cracked open in months are filled with recipes. He’s got this whole Hallmark dinner planned in his head for when he brings Sam home. He’ll show off his fancy new skills by fixing a grand, five-course supper; islander food but with a tasteful American twist. Cap’n’s surely been enjoying his experimenting; the offshoots go straight to his bowl, after all.

(Part of him recognizes that these hobbies won’t hide the lonely, despondent husk he’s become. The other side of him tells that part to shut the fuck up.)

He slices thick chunks of beef on the cutting board, Marvin Gaye playing on the surround sound he installed himself (with Rhodey’s help on the line after he screwed up the wiring the first time). Martha Stewart smiles at him through a muted TV while attempts to follow a recipe Sarah sent him on Pinterest (because he caved in and made an account, after all.)

"You know why I like you, Cap'n? 'Cause you don't complain when I under season the meat, sometimes. You appreciate my effort,” He transfers the diced meat into a bowl, where he lays out a careful arrangement of seasoning for the Jamaican beef stew. “I forgot to season the chicken _one_ time and that was the last Sam ever at from me. I don’t think he even talked to me that night.”

Cap’n whines from the floor. Steve sighs.

“I miss him too, buddy.”

Dinner turns out just as bad as he expected, and he sends a picture of the burnt results to Sarah with the caption “even Cap’n won’t eat this.” He eats a big bowl of Cheerios instead.

When it’s time for bed, he’s unable to sleep, which is a standard night these days. But he isn’t just tormented by apparitions of ice-cold water sucking him into the pit of the Earth, no. Rather, he thinks about that goddamned flip phone and that stupid piece of Sam’s wing-pack.

He promised himself he’d stop looking at them yesterday.

Then again, Steve’s never been the one for self-preservation.

The phone was busted when he found it in the shoebox; it wouldn’t turn on no matter how long he charged it. Luckily, Tony figured something out to get it operating again since it seemed relevant to their search. He wishes the phone stayed dead sometimes, when he lays awake on nights like this one.

The phone contained all kinds of messages going back and forth nearly the entire time he and Sam roamed South America. Coordinates, cities, hideouts, headquarters—all information Natasha claimed derived from “Russian sources” when she actually received them from Sam—who somehow managed to find a more dubious informant than the fabled Russians.

However, that isn’t the upsetting part. Objectively, the messages aren’t nefarious. Yes, Steve’s grieved that he was lied to by his boyfriend and closest friend, but everything was seemingly done in good-will. He also wasn’t the most amicable person to talk to during that time either.

The problem lies in the last chain of messages. An entire four months after returning to the states, whatever son of a bitch Sam was texting sent him coordinates to a rendezvous point only miles away from Sam’s apartment in D.C. He scrolls through the few messages sent that day.

2/10/15 10:34 PM **>** nat i don’t know about this one   
10:34PM **>** its been months. im tired.  
10:35 PM **>** i just want to kick back on the couch and make steven rub icyhot on my joints  
10:35 PM **>** its not like there’s been anything in these locations to anyway  
10:36PM **>** im being played

10:40 PM **>** if it’s tekken i think you have a chance

10:41 PM **>** shut up nat im serious  
10:41 PM **>** none of this makes any sense

10:43 PM **>** we dont have to do anything rlly. this isnt benefitting any1 than the dick ur talking to  
10:43 PM **>** just ditch the sd card  
10:43 PM **>** pretend u never saw it

10:44PM **>** ha ha. great plan.   
10:44 PM **>** this is last time im doing this. im done.  
2/11/15 1:28 AM **>** i just feel like im being used

He presses the heels of his palms over his eyes. His eyes prick with the telltale sting of tears; he blinks hard to stop them. The last incoming message is a random number. Well, technically, the other messages are too, seeing whoever Sam texted changed phones like underwear, but it’s the only one without a chain of replies.

2/16/15 8:15AM ** >** don’t go.

A little too fucking late for that.

Steve doesn’t know what this guy’s motive is. They can’t be a Hydra agent, he’s already figured that out a while ago. Not a wayward S.H.I.E.L.D. agent or half-brained vigilante itching for revenge. Whoever they are, they must’ve presented themselves as a trustworthy enough person for Sam to cooperate. Somebody astute and opportunistic. Somebody who managed to shirk his careful attention. Somebody whose callous unconcern sent Sam right into Hydra’s unbending hold.

His skin grows hot with anger, gooseflesh rising up his arms. Cap’n presses his cold nose against the back of Steve’s neck, then licks a slobbery line up to his hair. He forces himself to relax, closing the phone with a _clat_ and placing it on the nightstand.

[в я н у т ь]

JULY 4TH, 2015

His first birthday present surprisingly comes from Thor.

The 32oz glass of Asgardian mead magically appears (literally) on his coffee table, tied at the neck with a silk, red ribbon. It’s also the most contact any of the Avengers has had with him since the last world-ending crisis. Thor leaves a considerate note underneath the bottle, wishing him a happy “birth anniversary” an in thoughtful, but almost nonsensical, paragraph.

The second one comes from Tony and Rhodey. The gift’s more considerate than pricey, so he assumes it’s the latter who actually came up with the idea. It’s a set of classic vinyls in mint condition. The music is refined, ranging from Motown to Doo Wop. The fact that he _likes_ it confirms that Rhodey’s the one who selected the music, too.

Clint offers the third gift—only because he thinks he’s funny. It’s a child’s birthday card that reads _It’s Terrific to be A 10-Year-Old!_ with an added zero drawn in sharpie. When he opens the card, it sings to him out of key.

Banner comes in fourth with Tupperware. Compared to Clint’s, it’s not that bad of a present.

Even Sokolov pitches in to get America’s Sweetheart something special. Steve receives a five-terabyte external disk drive that he has no idea what to do with.

Natasha comes in dead last around midday. Her gift is a black set of lethal throwing knives, likely shipped in illegally from some shady weapons dealer in Europe. Still, Steve adds them to his collection; he even puts one in his utility belt.

Steve’s one request for everyone was to be left alone. He knows it's in bad spirit to spend his birthday cooped up in his apartment (especially when the other Avengers could use a party to lift their weary spirits for a night), but he can't imagine himself putting on a happy front long enough to _not_ seem ungrateful during the party.

The need for solitude has grown on him like mildew burgeoning in the damp corner of a bathroom. The silence once used to driver him mad, but he now finds himself anxious with too much noise. He’s a complete shut-in who only leaves his apartment long enough to attend a briefing and walk Cap’n.

At one point this week, Clint dropped by to provide some much-needed company. His entire visit, he attempted to spark conversations about regular people things. Like football. The weather. Upcoming elections. He appreciates normalcy, but anything less than unusual is…unusual. Still, Steve acknowledges his offer to hang out sometime.

After much shouting, kicking and screaming, Rumlow got his adamantium prosthetics. However, his lips are sealed until all his conditions are met. So much for positive reinforcement. Where Steve once firmly opposed, his resolve was worn down by sheer desperation. At this point, he's urging Tony to bite the bullet and give him what he wants. There’s a long list of ways this can head south—it’s why the team's been split fifty-fifty over the verdict for so long. But he'll be the determining factor in the next meeting, so long as this pushes them closer to finding Sam.

It feels like he's falling apart. Maybe the mead is making him melancholier than he usually is, but everything is beginning to feel pointless. Most problems, the Avengers manage to solve within a month. Hell, they've defeated an entire horde of aliens in less than a month. But finding Sam? Oh no— _that's_ the one that requires endless time and resources. They've made many discoveries about Hydra's next big plan, but essentially aren’t any closer to finding his location. In twelve days, it'll make exactly five months since Sam's been held hostage by violent white supremacists.

(That's longer than they've been dating, he cruelly thinks.)

Fuck, he needs to open a curtain and let some light in or something. He's been in a depressive slump; he hasn’t showered in two days and hasn't left his house in even more. The mead makes his legs worthless as he shakily rises to his feet.

God, he does _not_ miss the physical effects of being pissy drunk.

After some awkward maneuvering, he manages to wrench the curtains open, letting the last rays of sunshine penetrate his gloomy apartment. People already started lighting fireworks; they've been at it since yesterday. He chose a shitty day to be born and an even shittier war to be traumatized by.

Steve makes a half-assed attempt to tidy his apartment before he gives up and lays on the floor, dizzy. Supine on the fuzzy carpet, he stares at the vaulted ceiling until his vision grows hazy around the edges. Wetness streaks down the side of his face. He wipes it with his thump, observing his damp finger with profound confusion.

Is he _crying_?

It feels like he’s bursting full of emotion; the surface of his skin buzzing with all his pent-up exasperation and woe. The mead just popped the corkscrew off the bottle of his frustrations. He doesn’t know how to cope with all these feelings at once, let alone so strongly.

More tears start leaking from his eyes. He throws an accusatory glare at the bottle of mead through teary eyes.

Last time he accepts drinks from Thor ever again.

He supposes he falls asleep, because he wakes up at some point to fists pounding on his door. He blinks blearily around his apartment. It's dark for a moment before his apartment explodes in color from the fireworks. He dazedly watches the sky explode in reds, blues, and whites, mouth parted as shakily finds his footing and stands upright. The neighbors beneath him partying at full force. The loud bass thrums against the soles of his feet and rattles his walls.

He opens the door and squints at the woman before him life she's not real. Maybe she isn't. Who knows; it wouldn't be the first hallucination he's had today.

"Don’t you know how to answer your phone?"

"Sarah?" he asks unthinkingly.

"Don’t _Sarah_ me like you're all surprised. I've been banging on your door and calling your phone for like twenty minutes! I'm surprised none of your white neighbors called the police yet."

Steve has the wherewithal to step aside and invite her into his apartment. Luckily, Drunk Steve had enough common sense to tidy so that his place is presentable. That doesn’t help that he smells like a distillery, though, hair greasy and skin oily from sweat. He rubs the side of his face, fingertips running over the bumpy imprint of carpet on his cheek.

Sarah lifts two bottles of liquor with a mischievous grin. Steve blanches.

"I brought drinks to celebrate, but it seems like you already beat me to the punch," she mutters, raising Thor's mead to her eye.

"Don't drink that if you value your life."

"Is that what you had? 'Cause I'll just stick to Hennessy, then."

"Go ahead and, uh, make yourself comfortable. I'm gonna' clean up real quick. The remote is on the coffee table if you want to watch something."

Steve strips down and hops in the shower in record time. He lathers his body in soap, scrubbing his skin with a washcloth until he starts feeling human again. After he finishes, he throws on a pair of sweatpants and a white t-shirt. He towels his hair dry since it's long enough to be bothersome when wet. He joins her on the couch fifteen minutes later.

"So, what made you stop by?"

She stops surfing the TV—over two-thousand channels and nothing is ever on, what a _waste_ —and side-eyes him, lips quirked in displeasure. He briefly wonders if there’s something on his face.

"You texted me to come over hours ago," she says, exasperated. "But now I'm realizing you were probably drunk as hell when you did. I can always leave if this isn't a good time,"

He squeezes his eyes shut in embarrassment. He can imagine Drunk Steve texting Sarah in a throe of sorrow, seeking company that could relate to him in a way few others are capable of. He rubs a hand over his face, too mortified to think about whatever unintelligible, maudlin messages he wrote.

"It's fine, stay. Jesus, I can't believe I did that."

"Luckily, I was at a friend's house not too far away, so I'm not crying over gas money."

"Where's Jodie and Aubrey?" he asks, trying to put this conversation behind him. It’s official: he’s dumping the mead down the drain the first chance he gets.

"At said friend’s house, ruining her carpet with juice and cake instead of yours."

Sarah wastes no time drinking. She doesn’t bother mixing her liquor or utilizing the chaser she brought along. She just knocks it back from a glass cup, letting out a satisfied groan when it burns her chest.

They talk about nothing in particular for a while. It reminds Steve a lot of their conversation through text, friendly and lighthearted, but cautiously navigating a minefield of sorrow right underneath the surface. She shows off pictures of her kids on her phone, like their Halloween costumes last year (Thing One and Thing Two) and videos of them opening presents from their first Christmas together. She shows more cute baking recipes she found online, and she's so fascinated (or drunk) that she shows him the same picture three separate times during that conversation.

The TV livestreams the fireworks outside of Central Park. The streets are flooded with people. He's pleasantly buzzed from the mead, cheeks rosy and limbs loose.

But they're only able to avoid their problems for so long—his apartment isn’t big enough for two big, pink elephants, after all. Their strict lines of conversations blur as more liquor fills her cup, then suddenly, their talk veers straight into the gutter. He isn't sure what triggers the depressing change of tone (it might've been something she saw while browsing Facebook), but she's suddenly subdued. Fixed in somber contemplation. She rubs her index finger, right where the band of her wedding ring would go.

"I know you're probably wonderin' what happened to me," she mutters. Her eyes are downcast, glittering as fireworks dance across the sky.

"It's none of my business," He doesn't deny his curiosity. Steve’s mostly concerned for her safety, but forcing her to divest such personal matters wouldn’t help anyone.

"Nah, it's not," she puts her empty glass down. Sarah smooths her hands down her thighs and squeezes, fingers probably itching for a cigarette to hold. It’s a common tick—Peggy used to do the same thing all the time whenever she was feigning for a stick, a lighter and a quiet place to smoke. "But keeping all this shit inside? It doesn't work."

He understands the sentiment.

“I never expected to be the one getting hit on. I mean, I grew up around strong, female figures my entire life, from both sides of my family. Ma, Aunt Shirley…It just... _snuck_ up on me.

“He started small—kind of like that old sayin’ about the frog and the pot or some shit. At first, he'd start telling me what I should and shouldn’t wear outside the house. Made me feel bad for going out for drinks with the girls on the weekends. Accused me of sluttin' around at work sometimes, if he was drunk. If he got _real_ fucked up, he’d beat my ass black and blue ‘til the sun rose.

“And the whole time I kept tellin’ myself, _Sarah, you're too smart for this_. _Sarah, you've got a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences. How'd you end up falling for some stupid shit like this?_ And I thought, for a while, that maybe if I _pretended_ I was happy, I'd be happy. We got married. We moved to some house out in Chincoteague with a tire swing and white picket fence. I already had Jodie and was pregnant with Aubrey by then.

"I never told Sam what happened. _Couldn't_." she presses her hands over her eyes. Breaks for a second. Sniffles, then inhales a wet, trembling breath. Steve wants to wrap her in a hug, but there are boundaries and he doesn’t know where he lies. "I was so... _embarrassed_. I'm his big sister. He's a grown man, but he still looks up to me. Still calls me to help him choose the right shirt for his date with America's Sweetheart," He smiles briefly at that. "Ever since I held his big bobblehead for the first time, I said I'd protect him, y'know? Protect him until he's able to protect himself and beyond. Shit, but if I-I can't even help myself, how the hell was I supposed to h-help _him_?"

She starts crying in earnest now—eyelashes sticky a clumped together, makeup smeared in a harsh line across her face. It’s that gut-wrenching, uninhibited sob from a woman who spent too long holding her life together by the seams. Steve doesn't know what to do. Hasn't dealt with another person crying in a business where feelings were often suppressed and disregarded. He awkwardly pats her back. Her fists ball in his shirt.

"And my Ma, _god_. She's dying, Steve—she's really _dying_. It used to seem so far away...but she doesn't even look like herself anymore. She's not gonna make it to see Sam one last time, is she, huh?"

Steve's stunned into nonplus. He knew Darlene's health was progressively deteriorating, but over text and calls, it seemed less fatal. Detached. But now he's here with an armful of someone who's dealing with her brother's abduction and mother's death looming right on the horizon.

"I promised her—I..." he begins hoarsely, but his mouth snaps shut. He sounds like a naive child. What does a vow hold against terrorists? What does a vow hold against _death_?

Sarah abruptly tries pulling away from away from him, but she's too drunk and uncoordinated to make it far.

"Steve, I'm gonna—"

And next thing he knows, there's vomit coating his shirt. He scoops her up and rushes her to the bathroom before any more could get on his carpet. She heaves against the toilet bowl, throwing up everything in her stomach until she slumps over the rim.

"Oh shit, oh fu- _fuck!_ I am... _so_ sorry…"

He kind of feels like he deserves it.

Steve gives her a towel and enough privacy to let her shower in his bathroom. He takes the one on the opposite side of his apartment. He discards his shirt (wrapped in a bag that will be taken out with tomorrows trash) and rinses himself off. While the Asgardian mead wore off fine for him, he doubts the same can be said about Sarah and her Hennessy. He doesn’t have any non-super soldier strength painkillers in his apartment, but he can’t allow Sarah to wake up hungover with a killer migraine.

Guess he’s making a stop at the convenience store.

On such a busy holiday like the Fourth of July, words like “convenience” starts to lose its meaning. A walk that’d usually take ten minutes borders on an hour as he maneuvers streets crowded with drunks, partygoers and bystanders marveling the lightshow. Sarah must’ve headed to sleep while he’s out because she doesn’t respond to any of the text he sends.  

He enters his apartment with a tired sigh and flicks the light on. Then stops dead in his tracks.

He drops the pills to the ground.

Sitting at his dinner table is a dark figure—hunched over with icy eyes, layers of grimy sweaters and a VHS-2 gripped between gauze-wrapped palms.

" _Bucky_?!"

His apartment complex _seriously_ needed some better security.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so um. henlo. this took about longer than a bitch but i'm here right? any mistakes you see is bc im posting this at 2:30am on a school night  
> side note: i making some very minor edits to previous chapters  
> side note 2: i will get around to answering all the comments on this fic! i literally cannot thank you all enough for the support like im shedding gangsta tears  
> -tla

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a couple months since i've written anything, and i've never wrote in present tense before. if this chapter's crummy, i'm using this as my excuse  
> edit: i screwed up, oops  
> -tla


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